Children Psychological Studies

Studying the Social Worlds of Children
Studying the Social Worlds

of Children:
Sociological Readings
Edited by
Frances Chaput Waksler

The Falmer Press
(A member of the Taylor & Francis Group)
London New York Philadelphia
UK The Falmer Press, 4 John Street, London, WC1N 2ET
USA The Falmer Press, Taylor & Francis Inc., 1900 Frost Road, Suite
101, Bristol, PA 19007
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
Selection and editorial material copyright F.C.Waksler, 1991
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

First published 1991 Reprinted 1994

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Studying the social worlds of children: sociological readings/
Frances Chaput Waksler, [editor].
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1850009104: ISBN 1850009112 (pbk.):
1. Socialization. I. Waksler, Frances Chaput.
HQ783.S73 1991
305.231dc20 9046268
CIP

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Studying the social worlds of children: sociological
readings
1. Children. Social development
I. Waksler, Frances Chaput
305.23

ISBN 0-203-21477-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-27124-6 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 1-85000-911-2 (Print Edition)

Jacket design by Caroline Archer

v
Contents

Preface vii
Part I: Studying Children 1
Chapter 1 Becoming a Member of SocietySocialization 3
Peter L.Berger and Brigitte Berger
Chapter 2 Beyond Socialization 12
Chapter 3 Conceptions of Children and Models of Socialization 23
Robert W.Mackay
Chapter 4 The Least-Adult Role in Studying Children 38
Nancy Mandell
Chapter 5 Studying Children: Phenomenological Insights 60
Part II: Children in an Adult World 71
Chapter 6 Once Upon a Time 73
Norman Waksler
Chapter 7 Tinydopers: A Case Study of Deviant Socialization 77
Patricia A.Adler and Peter Adler
Chapter 8 Dancing When the Music is Over: A Study of Deviance
in a Kindergarten Classroom 95
Chapter 9 Watching People Watching Babies 113
Mary Constantine Joyce
Part III: Children in a Childs World 119
Chapter 10 The Culture of Children 1: Introductory 123
The Culture of Children 2: Half-Belief 133
Iona and Peter Opie
Chapter 11 Kids, Culture and Innocents 145
David A.Goode
Chapter 12 Childrens Negotiation of Meaning 161
Nancy Mandell
Contents
vi
Chapter 13 Children Doing Artwork 179
Erica Cavin
Chapter 14 On the Analysability of Stories by Children 195
Harvey Sacks
Chapter 15 The Hard Times of Childhood and Childrens
Strategies for Dealing with Them 216
Conclusion 235
Appendix I: Rules for Reading and Writing Sociology 239
Appendix II: Exercises 253
References 256
Notes on Contributors 266
Index 268
vii
Preface

What is a child? How do children differ from adults? How are they similar?
What do children know? What do they do? How do they view the world? Are
children merely incomplete adults or do they have their own identity and their
own culture? Do they have their own rules, both for themselves and for adults?
When adults are rearing, caring for, teaching, disciplining, and otherwise acting
towards children, what are those children doing and thinking? Are children
simply objects in the social world or are they actors as well? All these questions
and more emerge as the social worlds of children are explored.
There are many reasons for seeking to understand children and the social
worlds they inhabit. Those responsible for child care, teaching, and a range of
other child-related activities constantly look for answers to the everyday
questions that arise. An extensive body of common-sense knowledge has been
developed to guide practical activities involving children. Scientific knowledge
has also been developed in answer to practical needs as well as in response to
scientific curiosity. Biology has devoted many resources to the study of
childhood in a range of life forms. The study of children holds a central place in
psychology. Anthropology has considered childhood all over the world. History
has studied childhood through time.
The status of the sociological study of children, however, is curious. The
process of socialization, whereby children become members of adult society, is
central to sociological theory. Studies have been done and theories constructed
that provide extensive evidence of this process. Children, however, commonly
appear as objects of this process rather than as actors in it. Until recently,
socialization has been almost exclusively studied from the perspectives of
adults, with little recognition of the possibility that children themselves may
have their ownand quite differentperspectives.
When I was asked to develop a sociology course for students preparing for
careers working with children, I sought materials that would acquaint students
with the kinds of insights about children that can be provided by sociology.
Books and articles on the topic of socialization were readily available but those
that focused on children and their experiences from any other sociological
perspective were far less common and widely scattered. Thus originated the
Preface
viii
idea for this book. I began to gather sociological materials that would be both
insightful and enjoyable and that would provide an understanding of children
not available elsewhere. Through the years, I have added and deleted articles,
provided commentary to make materials more accessible to those new to
sociology, and, intrigued by the many ideas that have arisen in class discussions
and written assignments, have written some papers myself.
I have learned a great deal from my students. I have also reinforced my long-
standing commitment to the idea that although a legitimate distinction can be
made between theory and action, well-constructed and clearly presented theory
can be used as a practical guide to everyday action. I have come to see that the
study of children is a far more diverse sphere than I had initially thought and
that such study can make valuable contributions to understanding adult
behavior as well that of children. An examination of children in adults worlds
and in childrens worlds provides insights into the social world as a whole.
Design of the Book
This book was designed for use by those new to sociology. For those familiar
with sociology, the articles themselves have much to offer and judicious
skimming of introductory materials is recommended. Teachers, teachers of
teachers, parents, and those simply interested in the social worlds of children,
regardless of sociological background, should find the materials both useful
and accessible.
The papers in Part I: Studying Children provide an account of socialization
as it is commonly conceived of by sociologists, offer criticisms of socialization
as a concept, and detail the wide range of ideas and data that come to light
when investigators move beyond socialization to other ways of looking at
children. One pariticularly important idea that emerges is that adult views of
children and childrens views of themselves differ. The recognition of these
different perspectives and the sociological suspension of belief that any one
perspective is necessarily superior make it possible to see children as inhabiting
two worlds: that of adults and that of children.
The papers in Parts II and III grow out of the criticisms and embody the
insights of Part I. These papers expand understanding of childrens social
worlds and exemplify the contributions that are claimed in Part I to emerge
from moving beyond socialization. Part II: Children in an Adult World
consists of papers that display a range of adult perspectives on children. Rather
than criticizing these papers for adopting adult perspectives and neglecting
those of children, I recommend reading them as portrayals of adult perspectives
while recognizing that other perspectives are possible. Read in this way, they
provide rich data about the social worlds that children inhabit, worlds not of
their making. A similar approach can be taken towards any article that takes an
adult perspective, i.e. it can be read not as the truth but as one perspective. This
approach makes it possible to learn from works conducted from points of view
other than the ones espoused here, accepting their insights without being
impeded by their limits. The papers in Part III: Children in a Childs World
bring into clear view the richness of the worlds of children and the extensive
ix
Preface
work that children do to create and sustain their worlds. Read in conjunction
with the articles in Part II, they show that adults views of children and the
actual social worlds that children inhabit are quite different. Neither is right or
wrong. Both exist.
Appendix I provides a brief introduction to the sociological perspective that
guided my selection of articles and that informs my own work. Those new to
the field may find it useful to read before proceeding to the book proper. Those
familiar with the field may find it a useful articulation of one sociological
perspective. Suggestions for exercises to accompany the chapters are provided
in Appendix II.
A Note on Editing and Style
I have always been frustrated by edited materials because they left me
wondering what had been left out and why. I have therefore edited as little as
possible the materials included here. I have been guided by student responses,
shortening articles students found too long and removing materials that were
repetitive or were not directly relevant to the task at hand of understanding
children in social worlds.
Only two articles were significantly shortened. In its original form, Chapter
1, Becoming a Member of SocietySocialization, contained a number of
examples which, while interesting, extended a consideration of socialization
beyond what seems necessary for a basic grasp of the concept. Chapter 10, The
Culture of Children, is drawn from a detailed compilation of childrens games,
primarily from Britain. I eliminated a number of the examples and substituted,
where possible, examples drawn from the US. For two other articles, Chapter 8,
Dancing When the Music is Over, and Chapter 11, Kids, Culture and Innocents,
I removed the introductory theoretical material since the general ideas are
already presented in Part I. Lastly, for Chapter 12, Childrens Negotiation of
Meaning, I omitted the Introduction, which provided a review of the literature
that is available in the References.
Authors and publishers of the materials included in this book have followed
the different stylistic conventions of the United States, Canada, and Britain.
Readers will thus find, depending on their own customary usage, a superfluity
or dearth of us (behaviour/behavior) and other apparent oddities
(programme/program); US readers will note different conventions for the use of
quotation marks. To adopt exclusively the standard of any one country,
however, would violate the relativistic spirit within which the book has been
written and thus some of these stylistic differences have been retained.
Acknowledgments
This book is the product of the work of a multitude of studentsthose who
initially suggested that I teach a sociology course about children and those who
have enrolled in the course in the years since its development. I cannot name
them all individually but recognize the important part each has played in
Preface
x
teaching me about children and in making this book possible. I would, however,
like to name four students in particular: Erica Cavin, who showed me the kinds
of empirical work to which my theoretical ideas could lead; Trisha Brown,
whose use of ideas from these materials demonstrated their practical
applicability in work with children; Michele Rennie, whose writings disclosed
aspects of childrens worlds of which I had not been aware; and Laura Kesten,
whose enthusiasm encouraged me. I also want to thank all the contributors, not
only for their generosity in making their papers available to me but also for
their insightful work that led me to select their papers in the first place.
And, lastly, I want to thank all the children whose experiences are chronicled
on the pages of this book.
November, 1990
1

Part I

Studying Children
The five papers in Part I address various ways that children have been and can
be studied sociologically. Chapter 1, from Peter and Brigitte Bergers
introductory sociology book, presents in clear and thoughtful fashion the
sociological concept of socialization. This concept has served as the
fundamental orienting idea for the sociological study of children. Studies of
socialization are certainly worthy of serious attention by anyone interested in
understanding the social worlds that children inhabit. Socialization is a
particularly useful topic to explore when ones concern is with what adults do
when their goal is to prepare children for life in the social worlds of which
adults are a part. Whenever adults and children are together or when children
are with other children, however, a great deal is going on that is not
socialization. An exclusive focus on socialization obscures from view these
other activities and processes in which children are involved.
In Chapter 2, I demonstrate some of the limits of the notion of socialization,
ways that it distorts lived experiences in the social world and blinds us to other
aspects of the social lives of both adults and children. Chapter 3, by Robert
Mackay, continues the critique of socialization, providing ample evidence of
how much children know that has not been explicitly taught to them by adults.
Chapters 4 and 5 provide suggestions for the study of children that respond to
the criticisms of socialization as a concept and an exclusive framework within
which to study children.
As a whole, Part I establishes socialization as but one process in which
children are engaged. It is to other processes, those far less frequently
investigated but equally important in understanding the social worlds of
children, that the remainder of this book is addressed. In order to understand
those other processes, however, it is important to grasp the strengths and limits
of the concept of socialization. With this knowledge, reading of the papers in
Part II can become a critical endeavor and adult views can be examined as data
rather than accepted as necessarily true; adult views and sociological insights
are not the same thing. Similarly, the papers in Part III can only exist if the
concept of socialization is suspended. The papers in Part I thus require careful
attention, for they provide a perspective for reading Part II and make possible
the kind of sociological studies chronicled in Part III.
F.C.W.
3

Chapter 1

Becoming a Member of Society
Socialization
Peter L.Berger and Brigitte Berger
Commentary
In their presentation, the Bergers provide a well-balanced description of
socialization, a concept that has provided the major framework within which
sociologists have studied children. Their treatment of the topic is sufficiently
clear to require little introduction. Here I simply highlight some key features of
the concept and suggest spheres of possible criticism.
Socialization can be conceived of as a fundamental social process through
which 1) individuals becomes social members, i.e. members of specific social
groups and of society as a whole, and 2) an individual develops a self. A person
can be said to be socializedand thus socialization can be said to most
effectively support the status quowhen the self thinks and acts in consonance
with what is deemed right by the social group of which it is a part. If, for
example, murder is abhorrent to someone who belongs to a group that forbids
murder, that person can be said to be well socialized to that group in that
respect. If, however, someone craves meat who is a member of a vegetarian
group, that person is not well socialized to that group in that respecteven if
the person avoids eating meat for fear of punishment.
The socialization process rests on the idea that the self is a social product.
People develop selves in interaction with others, creating selves as they
simultaneously learn about others. As they learn language and the categories
that make up language, they develop ways of viewing the social world that are
similar to the ways of others with whom they share that social world. They
learn the rules that exist in their social worlds, taking some for granted,
questioning others, following some, learning how to break others. Some rules
become so much a part of the self that they are unquestionably accepted as true;
other rules are followed through fear of punishment; yet other rules are broken,
with varying consequences for all those involved.
From Sociology: A Biographical Approach, Second, Expanded Edition, by Peter L.
Berger and Brigitte Berger. 1972, 1975 by Peter and Brigitte Berger. Reprinted by
permission of Basic Books, Inc., Publishers.
4
The process of socialization can thus be used to explain how it is possible for
people to come to display the kinds of patterned social behavior that they do. In
some ways the socialization process is different for every person, and every
person emerges from the process different in some respects from every other
person. Without denying this difference, sociologists focus on the
commonalities, on the ways that all people are alike and the ways that members
of a category or group are more like one another than like members of other
categories or groups. The concept of socialization is thus used to explain how
individuals come to resemble members of their own categories and groups and
to differ from others.
Certainly socialization is an important social process and the Bergers
article shows the many ways that it can aid in understanding childrens
behavior (and adults behavior as well). Indeed sociologists have learned a
great deal about children as they have conducted studies of socialization.
For that reason Part I begins with an article on that topic. As will be seen
in the remainder of Part I, however, criticisms can be directed to the
whole notion of socialization and children can be studied in other
frameworks as well.
Readers are advised to approach the Bergers chapter critically. To facilitate
this process, ideas that will be further discussed in Chapter 2 will be set in bold
face type. The following questions can be raised about the concept of
socializationquestions that are addressed in the remainder of Part I:

Are mothers necessarily the only or major people to socialize children?
What are children doing when adults are socializing them?
What power do children, even infants, have in the socialization
process?
What effects do children have on adults? Do children socialize adults?
What are the criteria for deciding that socialization has/has not taken
place?
F.C.W.
Being an Infant: Non-Social and Social Components
For better or worse, all of us begin by being born. The first condition we
experience is the condition of being an infant. When we begin to analyze
what this condition entails, we obviously come up against a number of
things that have nothing to do with society. First of all, being an infant
entails a certain relationship to ones own body. One experiences hunger,
pleasure, physical comfort or discomfort and so forth. In the condition of
being an infant one is assaulted in numerous ways by the physical
environment. One experiences light and darkness, heat and cold; objects of
all sorts impinge upon ones attention. One is warmed by the rays of the
sun, one is intrigued by the smoothness of a surface or, if one is unlucky,
one may be rained upon or bitten by a flea. Being born means to enter into
a world with a seemingly infinite richness of experience. A good deal of this
experience is not social. Needless to say, an infant at the time does not
make such distinctions. It is only in retrospect that it is possible to
5
Socialization
differentiate the social and the non-social components of his experience.
Having made this distinction, however, it is possible to say that the
experience of society also begins at birth. The world of the infant is
populated by other people. Very soon he is able to distinguish between
them, and some of them become of over-whelming significance for him.
From the beginning, the infant not only interacts with his own body and
with his physical environment, but with other human beings. The biography
of the individual, from the moment of birth, is the story of his relations
with others.
More than that, the non-social components of the infants experience are
mediated and modified by others, that is, by his social experience. The
sensation of hunger in his stomach can only be assuaged by the actions of
others. Most of the time, physical comfort or discomfort is brought about by
the actions or omissions of others. The object with the pleasurably smooth
surface was probably placed within the infants grasp by somebody. And very
likely, if he is rained upon, it is because somebody left him outside without
cover. In this way, social experience, while it can be distinguished from other
elements in the infants experience, is not in an isolated category. Almost every
aspect of the infants world involves other human beings. His experience of
others is crucial for all experience. It is others who create the patterns through
which the world is experienced. It is only through these patterns that the
organism is able to establish a stable relationship with the outside worldnot
only the social world but the world of physical environment as well. But these
same patterns also penetrate the organism; that is, they interfere with the way it
functions. Thus it is others who set the patterns by which the infants craving
for food is satisfied. But in doing so, these others also interfere with the infants
organism itself. The most obvious illustration of this is the timetable of
feedings. If the child is fed at certain times, and at certain times only, the
organism is forced to adjust to this pattern. In making this adjustment, its
functioning changes. What happens in the end is not only that the infant is fed
at certain times but that he is hungry at those times. Graphically, society not
only imposes its patterns upon the infants behavior but reaches inside him to
organize the functions of his stomach. The same observation pertains to
elimination, to sleeping and to other physiological processes that are endemic to
the organism.
Socialization: Relative Patterns Experienced as Absolute
The process through which an individual learns to be a member of society is
called socialization. [S]ocialization is the imposition of social patterns on
behavior. And, as we have tried to show, these patterns even interfere with the
physiological processes of the organism. It follows that, in the biography of
every individual, socialization, and especially early socialization, is a
tremendously powerful and important fact. From the point of view of the outside
observer, the patterns that are imposed in socialization are highly relative.
They depend not only upon the individual peculiarities of the adults who are in
charge of the child but also upon the various social groupings to which these
adults belong. Thus, the patterns of a childs behavior depend not only upon
6
whether he is a Gusii [of Kenya] or an American but also whether he is a middle-
class or working-class American. From the point of view of the child, however,
these same patterns are experienced in a very absolute way. Indeed, there are
reasons to think that if this were not so, the child would become disturbed and
socialization could not proceed.
The absoluteness with which societies patterns confront the child is based
on two very simple factsthe great power of the adults in the situation, and the
ignorance of the child of alternative patterns. Psychologists differ in their view
as to whether the child experiences the adults at this stage of life as being very
much under his control (because they are generally so responsive to his needs)
or whether he feels continually threatened by them (because he is so dependent
upon them). However this may be, there can be no question that, objectively
speaking, adults have overwhelming power in the situation. The child can, of
course, resist them, but the probable outcome of any conflict is a victory on the
part of the adults. It is they who control most of the rewards that he craves and
most of the sanctions that he fears. Indeed, the simple fact that most children
are eventually socialized affords simple proof of this proposition. At the same
time, it is obvious that the small child is ignorant of any alternatives to the
patterns that are being imposed upon him. The adults confront him with a
worldfor him, it is the world. It is only much later that he discovers that there
are alternatives to this particular world, that his parents world is relative in
space and time, and that quite different patterns are possible. Only then does
the individual become aware of the relativity of social patterns and of social
worldsin the extreme case, he might even follow up this insight by becoming
a sociologist.
Initiating a Child: The World Becomes His World
There is, thus, a way of looking at socialization from what one might call the
policemans point of view; that is, socialization can be viewed primarily as the
imposition of controls from without, supported by some system of rewards and
punishments. There is another, if you will, more benign way of looking at the
same phenomenon, namely, one can look upon socialization as a process of
initiation in which the child is permitted to develop and expand into a world
available to him. In this aspect, socialization is an essential part of the process of
becoming fully human and realizing the full potential of the individual.
Socialization is a process of initiation into a social world, its forms of
interaction and its many meanings. The social world of his parents first
confronts the child as an external, vastly powerful and mysterious reality. In the
course of socialization, that world becomes comprehensible. The child enters it,
becomes capable of participating in it. It becomes his world.
Language, Thinking, Reflection and Talking Back
The primary vehicle of socialization, especially in this second aspect, is
language. [We want to] stress how essential language is for socialization and,
indeed, for any continuing participation in a society. It is in acquiring language
7
Socialization
that a child learns to convey and retain socially recognized meaning. He begins
to be able to think abstractly, which means that his mind becomes able to move
beyond the immediate situation. It is also through the acquisition of language
that the child becomes capable of reflection. Past experience is reflected upon
and integrated into a growing, coherent view of reality. Present experience is
ongoingly interpreted in terms of this view, and future experience can not only
be imagined but planned for. It is through this growing reflection that the child
becomes conscious of himself as a selfin the literal sense of re-flection, that is,
of the childs attention turning back from the outside world to himself.
It is very easy, and, of course, up to a point correct, to think of
socialization as a shaping or molding process. Indeed, the child is shaped by
society, molded in such a way that he can be a recognized and participant
member of it. But it is also important not to see this as a one-sided process.
The child, even the very young infant, is not a passive victim of
socialization. He resists it, participates in it, collaborates with it in varying
degrees. Socialization is a reciprocal process in the sense that not only the
socialized but the socializers are affected by it. This can be observed fairly
easily in everyday life. Usually parents succeed to a greater or lesser degree
in shaping their children in accordance with the overall patterns established
by society and desired by themselves. But the parents also are changed by
the experience. The childs capacity for reciprocity, that is, his capacity to
act on his own upon the world and other people inhabiting it increases in
direct relation to his capacity to use language. Quite literally, the child then
starts to talk back to the adults.
In the same vein, it is important to recognize that there are limits to
socialization. These limits are given in the childs organism. Given an
average intelligence, it is possible to take an infant from any part of the
world and socialize him into becoming a member of American society. Any
normal child can learn English. Any normal child can learn the values and
patterns for living that are attached to the English language in America.
Probably every normal child could also learn a system of musical notation.
But clearly every normal child could not be developed into a musical genius.
Unless the potential for this were already given in the organism, any efforts
at socialization in this direction would come up against hard and
impregnable resistance. The present state of scientific knowledge (especially
in the area of human biology) does not permit us to describe the precise
limits of socialization. All the same, it is very important to be aware that
these limits exist.
Internalization, Conscience and Self-Discovery
[O]ne of the terms used to describe socialization, and sometimes used
almost interchangeably with it, is that of internalization. What is meant by
this is that the social world, with its multitude of meanings, becomes
internalized in the childs own consciousness. What previously was
experienced as something outside himself can now become experienced
within himself as well. In a complicated process of reciprocity and
reflection, a certain symmetry is established between the inner world of the
8
individual and the outer social world within which he is being socialized.
The phenomenon we usually call conscience illustrates this most clearly.
Conscience, after all, is essentially the internalization (or, rather, the
internalized presence) of moral commands and prohibitions that previously
came from the outside. It all began when somewhere in the course of
socialization a significant other said, Do this, Dont do that. As
socialization proceeded, the child identified with these statements of
morality. In identifying with them, he internalized them. Somewhere along
the line, he said to himself, Do this, or Dont do that,probably in much
the same manner that his mother or some other significant person first said
them to him. Then these statements became silently absorbed into his own
mind. The voices have become inner voices. And finally it is the individuals
own conscience that is speaking to him.
Once more it is possible to look upon this in different ways. One can look at
internalization from what we previously called the policemans point of view,
and it will be correct to do so. As the example of conscience clearly illustrates,
internalization has something to do with controlling the individuals conduct. It
makes it possible for such controls to be continuous and economical. It would
be terribly expensive for society, and probably impossible, to constantly
surround the individual with other people who will say, Do this, and dont do
that. When these injunctions have become internalized within the individuals
own consciousness, only occasional reinforcements from the outside are
necessary. Most of the time, most individuals will control themselves. But this is
only one way of looking at the phenomenon. Internalization not only controls
the individual but opens up the world for him. Internalization not only allows
the individual to participate in the outside social world but it also enables him
to have a rich inner life of his own. Only by internalizing the voices of others
can we speak to ourselves, If no one had significantly addressed us from the
outside, there would be silence within ourselves as well. It is only through
others that we can come to discover ourselves. Even more specifically it is only
through significant others that we can develop a significant relationship to
ourselves. This, among other reasons, is why it is so important to choose ones
parents with some care.
Hes Only a ChildBiological Growth and
Biographical Stages
There is, of course, a certain parallelism between the biological processes of
growth and socialization. If nothing else, the growth of the organism sets limits
to socialization. Thus, it would be futile if a society wanted to teach language to
a child one month old or calculus to a child aged two years. However, it would
be a great mistake to think that the biographical stages of life, as defined by
society, are directly based on the stages of biological growth. This is so with
regard to all stages of biography, from birth to death, but it is also true of
childhood. There are many different ways of structuring childhood not only in
terms of its duration but in terms of its characteristics. It is no doubt possible for
the biologist to provide a definition of childhood in terms of the degree of
development of the organism; and the psychologist can give a corresponding
9
Socialization
definition in terms of the development of the mind. Within these biological and
psychological limits, however, the sociologist must insist that childhood itself is
a matter of social construction. This means that society has great leeway in
deciding what childhood is to be.
Childhood, as we understand and know it today, is a creation of the modern
world, especially of the bourgeoisie.
1
It is only very recently in Western history
that childhood has come to be conceived of as a special and highly protected
age. This modern structure of childhood is not only expressed in innumerable
beliefs and values regarding children (for example, the notion that children are
somehow innocent) but also in our legislation. Thus, it is today a just about
universal assumption in modern societies that children are not subject to the
ordinary provisions of criminal law. It was not so very long ago that children
were simply looked upon as little adults. This was very clearly expressed by the
manner in which they were dressed. As recently as the eighteenth century, as we
can see by looking at paintings from this period, children walked around with
their parents dressed in identical fashionexcept, of course, in smaller sizes. As
childhood came to be understood and organized as a very special phase of life,
distinct from adulthood, children began to be dressed in special ways.
A case in point is the modern belief in the innocence of children, that is,
the belief that children ought to be protected from certain aspects of life.
For fascinating comparative reading, we may look at the diary kept by the
royal physician during the childhood of Louis XIII of France at the
beginning of the seventeenth century.
2
His nanny played with his penis
when Louis was less than one year old. Everyone thought that this was
great fun. Soon afterward, the little prince made a point of always
exhibiting his penis amid general merriment. He also asked everyone to kiss
it. This ribald attention to the childs genital parts continued for several
years and involved not only frivolous maids and the like but also his
mother, the Queen. At the age of four the Prince was taken to his mothers
bed by a lady of the court and told, Monsieur, this is where you were
made. Only after he reached about seven years of age did the notion arise
that he ought to have a certain degree of modesty about this part of his
body. One may add that Louis XIII was married at the age of fourteen, by
which time, as one commentator remarks wryly, he had nothing left to
learn.
Appropriating an Identity: Being Assigned or Subscribing
The socialized part of the self is commonly called identity.
3
Every society
may be viewed as holding a repertoire of identitieslittle boy, little girl,
father, mother, policeman, professor, thief, archbishop, general and so forth.
By a kind of invisible lottery, these identities are assigned to different
individuals. Some of them are assigned from birth, such as little boy or little
girl. Others are assigned later in life, such as clever little boy or pretty little
girl (or, conversely, stupid little boy or ugly little girl). Other identities are
put up, as it were, for subscription, and individuals may obtain them by
deliberate effort, such as policeman or archbishop. But whether an identity
is assigned or achieved, in each case it is appropriated by the individual
10
through a process of interaction with others. It is others who identify him in
a specific way. Only if an identity is confirmed by others is it possible for
that identity to be real to the individual holding it. In other words, identity
is the product of an interplay of identification and self-identification. This is
even true of identities that are deliberately constructed by an individual.
For example, there are individuals in our society who are identified as male
who would prefer to be female. They may do any number of things, all the way
to surgery, in order to reconstruct themselves in terms of the desired new
identity. The essential goal which they must achieve, however, is to get at least
some others to accept that new identity, that is, to identify them in these terms.
It is impossible to be anything or anybody for very long all by oneself. Others
have to tell us who we are, others have to confirm our identity. There are,
indeed, cases where individuals hold on to an identity that no one else in the
world recognizes as real. We call such individuals psychotics. They are marginal
cases of great interest, but their analysis cannot concern us here.
Secondary Socialization: Entering New Worlds
In talking about education, we have already implied that socialization does
not come to an end at the point where an individual child becomes a full
participant in society. Indeed, one may say that socialization never comes to
an end. In a normal biography, what happens simply is that the intensity
and scope of socialization dimmish after early childhood. Sociologists
distinguish between primary and secondary socialization. By primary
socialization is meant the original process by which a child becomes a
participant member of a society. By secondary socialization are meant all
later processes by which an individual is inducted into a specific social
world. For example, every training in an occupation involves processes of
secondary socialization. In some cases, these processes are relatively
superficial. For example, no profound changes in the identity of an
individual are required to train him to be a certified public accountant. This
is not the case, however, if an individual is to be trained to be a priest or to
be a professional revolutionary. There are instances of secondary
socialization of this kind that resemble in intensity what goes on in the
socialization of early childhood. Secondary socialization is also involved in
such widely different experiences as improving ones general social position,
changing ones place of residence, adapting to a chronic illness or being
accepted by a new circle of friends.
Relations to Individuals and the Social Universe
All processes of socialization take place in face-to-face interaction with other
people. In other words, socialization always involves changes in the micro-
world* of the individual. At the same time, most processes of socialization,
11
Socialization
both primary and secondary, relate the individual to complex structures of the
macro-world. The attitudes which the individual learns in socialization usually
refer to broad systems of meaning and of values that extend far beyond his
immediate situation. For example, habits of neatness and cleanliness are not
only eccentric notions of a particular set of parents but are values of great
importance in a broad middle-class world. Similarly, roles learned in
socialization refer to vast institutions that may not be readily visible within the
individuals micro-world. Thus, learning the role of being a brave little boy is
not only conducive to approval by ones parents and playmates but will have
significance to the individual as he makes his career in a much broader world of
institutions, ranging from the college football field to the military. Socialization
links micro-world and macro-world. First, socialization enables the individual
to relate to specific individual others; subsequently, it enables him to relate to an
entire social universe. For better or for worse, being human entails having such
a relationship on a lifelong basis.
Notes
1 Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood (New York, Knopf, 1962).
2 Aries, ibid., pp. 100ff.
3 It is not quite clear who first used the concept of identity in this sense. Its popularity
in recent years is largely due to the work of Erik Erikson, who may be described as
a sociologically inclined psychoanalyst. See his Childhood and Society (New York,
Norton, 1950).
* The term micro-world refers to that part of the social world within an individuals
immediate graspthat world which is directly available to the senses. It includes
friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, living situations, household arrangements, and
other immediate features of the social world. The term macro-world refers to that part
of the social world that seems to lie outside of the individual and may be perceived as
existing out there, beyond an individuals control or influence. It includes laws,
governments, religion, and other aspects of the social world that appear massive and
beyond ones grasp. It is important to note, however, that the macro-world is itself
composed of micro-worldslaws are hammered out through social interactions among
individuals, government officials meet together face to face, and religious experiences
take place on the individual level. (Waksler)
12

Chapter 2

Beyond Socialization
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to set forth some major criticisms that can be
made of the concept of socialization as it is formulated and used by sociologists.
To identify problems is not necessarily to provide resolutions, but clearly it is a
fundamental step in that process.
The Bergers description of socialization was chosen for inclusion as Chapter
1 and for criticism in this chapter because theirs is a particularly sophisticated
introductory treatment. While they avoid the pitfalls inherent in overly
simplified presentations, the very clarity of their work sets in relief problematic
aspects of the concept of socialization. Such problems characterize virtually all
introductory treatments (see, for example, Robertson, 1989 and Vander
Zanden, 1990). In this chapter, the specific criticisms to be put forth center
around two general features of socialization: the concept itself and its range.
The Concept Itself
Is socialization the name for an identifiable and documentable process whose existence
is subject to proof or refutation, or is it rather the name for an assumption made to
organize a wide range of activities? Either can prove useful to understanding but they
are in no sense interchangeable. What follows is not dependent upon either answer
to the question posed, though the ideas presented lead towards the conclusion that
the concept of socialization names an assumption rather than an empirically verifiable
process. (In Chapter 3, Mackay argues that the concept as it is currently constituted
is not a sociological concept at all but merely an everyday adult view of children.)
The Range of the Concept
In the sociological literature, studies of socialization have focused extensively
on children and the study of children has been conducted primarily in terms of
13
socialization. As a consequence, socialization of children and of adults have
been conceived of as different rather than similar processes, as evidenced, for
example, in the distinction between initial and secondary socialization.
Childrens activities unrelated to socialization have been, until quite recently,
minimally investigated by sociologists. The range of the concept of socialization
can thus be said to be both too narrow (when it focuses only on children) and
too broad (when it serves as the major way to understand children).
In what follows I first discuss an important distinction sociologists make
between initial and secondary socialization, a topic touched upon in the
previous chapter. This distinction assumes the existence of clear differences
between adults and children and obscures similarities. Next I consider Dennis
Wrongs classic criticism of socialization. Then I provide some further criticisms
of the concept and locate the source of many of the problems in adult taken-for-
granted assumptions. Lastly, I suggest some ways that the concept of
socialization might be modified and the advantages to be gained from moving
beyond the concept altogether.
Initial and Secondary Socialization
Face-to-face interaction is the fundamental setting for socialization. When
individuals are together, sharing time and space, able to see and hear and feel
the actions of each as responses to the actions of the other, a very special
situation occurs for learning about others, ones self, and ones impact on the
world. Socialization can take place in a variety of settings, but face-to-face
interaction, as the prototypical social experience (Berger and Luckmann,
1966), is the key one.
Sociologists identify two different kinds of socialization: initial (or
primary) and secondary. Initial socialization refers to those processes that
take place firstlearning ones first language, discovering ones first
others, encountering ones first rules. Two characteristics of initial
socialization are particularly crucial for the unfolding of the process: 1) The
agent of socialization (the person carrying out the process) has power over
the person being socialized. In the extreme, this power can be that over life
and death. Although this claim may sound a bit strong, in fact adults have
such power over infants, as the extensive evidence on child abuse makes
clear. That adults do not routinely make full use of their power does not
eliminate it; social limits on that power can be overcome. Exactly how
children perceive the power of adults is unknown but there is no reason for
assuming that they are unaware of it. 2) The person being socialized has no
prior experience of that being inculcated. Compare the difference between
learning ones first language and learning a second. In learning a second,
one can translate into terms of the first, use the first as a basis, etc. Ones
first language is learned in a sense through faithfaith that what others are
teaching has meaning, is worth trying, and/or somehow works.
Secondary socialization differs in one very basic respect from initial
socialization: it comes after initial socialization. Those undergoing
secondary socialization have already been socialized and thus may be either
more receptive or more defensive towards the new ideas and actions to
14
which they are being socialized. To be born into a religion and practice it
throughout ones life is very different from converting from one religion to
another; in the latter process, one has both more choice (e.g. the very choice
of converting or abandoning the endeavor) and more limits (e.g. the
difficulty or even impossibility of coming to believe something that one had
previously thought unbelievable). Secondary socialization is most successful
in bringing about fundamental changes in people when the conditions under
which it occurs most closely approximate those of childhood, i.e. when the
one being socialized is dependent on the agents of socialization, has
significantly less power than they, and has little access to outsiders. To
illustrate secondary socialization when it adopts some of the fundamental
features of initial socialization, sociologists commonly offer the examples of
the novitiate/ seminary and of basic training in the military sphere.
Typically, however, secondary socialization is less extensive and more
congruent with earlier socialization.
Sociological studies of children tend to focus on initial (primary)
socialization, routinely assuming that children come into the world empty, to
be filled with the social ideas of the groups into which they are born. Even those
who articulate objections to such an assumption may implicitly use it
nonetheless. Sociological studies have explored both of the earlier-mentioned
aspects of socializationbecoming a group member and developing a selfby
focusing on who gets socialized by whom to what with what outcomes. What is
neglected in such an approach, by being assumed as non-problematic, is what
the one being socialized is doing at the timeboth with reference to the
socialization process and to other projects that person has in mind. By slapping
a child when that child tries to touch a hot stove, one may indeed socialize that
child to keep away from that stove and even stoves in general, but 1) the child
may not have planned to touch the stove but simply see how close one could
get, already knowing not to touch it and 2) the childs activities, whatever they
are, are aborted.
Two fundamental criticisms can be addressed to the concept of socialization
at this point. First, the concept of initial socialization in particular assumes that
children are empty buckets who readily contain whatever is poured into them.
If, however, there is something already in the bucket (e.g. childrens own
experiences), the resulting contents are of necessity different from that which
was poured in. In such cases, what has been studied as initial socialization may
in fact be an outcome of secondary socialization. Second, the concept assumes
the existence of an agent of socialization and an object of socialization and thus
a one-way process that neglects the reciprocity that is the very heart of
sociologys subject matter. (Indeed the Bergers do refer to this reciprocity, but
nonetheless they focus on the child and offer no examples of children affecting
adults.)
The Oversocialized Conception of Man
Dennis HWrong, in an article entitled The Oversocialized Conception of Man
in Modern Sociology (1961), provides what has come to be viewed as a classic
critique of the concept of socialization. Even though his objections have been
15
widely accepted, they have not led to sufficient modification of the concept to
render his criticisms obsolete.
In his article Wrong argues that overuse and overextension of the concept of
socialization has obscured that which it has claimed to study. He begins by
considering one of the central questions of sociological inquiry: How is it
possible that people follow social rules? One common sociological answer is:
Because they are socialized to do so. Wrong finds this answer unsatisfactory, for
it suggests that rule-following automatically follows socialization, that once
socialized one has no choice but to follow those rules to which one was
socialized, and thus that the question itself is trivial. If, as Wrong argues, the
question is an important one, then any answer that trivializes it is suspect. In
everyday conversation, it is not uncommon to explain why one has done
something by claiming: That is how I learned to do it or That is how I was
brought up. The insufficiency of such explanations can be demonstrated by
posing the questions: Do you do everything as you learned to do it? Do you do
everything that you were brought up to do? More accurate and fruitful as an
empirical questions is: Of those things one has learned to do/been brought up to
do, which does one adopt and which does one not? This question keeps alive the
question: How is it possible that humans follow social rules? for it keeps it a
question in search of an answer rather than setting it as a question with the
automatic answer, socialization.
Wrong claims that the very significance of this and other fundamental
questions in sociology is that they may never be answered definitively and for
all times because of their complexity, but, nonetheless, their very existence
serves as a basis for continued exploration and thought. New sociological
studies continually make possible reconsideration of answers to these central
questions, but any facile and definitive answers are suspect, for they obscure the
essentially problematic nature of the questions themselves.
Although he does not criticize the concept of socialization in itself,
Wrong does fault the way it has been used by sociologists. Without denying
that human beings are socialized or that they internalize social norms, he
argues that socialization cannot explain all human behavior, or even all
rule-following behavior. He offers objections to the empty bucket theory of
human nature, the idea that people are born without any social or personal
ideas and that through the socialization process this empty bucket is filled
with the ideas of the social groups in which socialization takes place. The
view he criticizes is called social determinism, for it claims that individual
behavior is determined by the social world. In everyday talk it is
exemplified in the statement made to explain ones behavior: Society made
me do it. Such a view in its extreme form rejects the possibility of
independent human action and choice.
In everyday life it may be common to see the behavior of others: as socially
determined, but seldom does one apply such a notion to ones own behavior,
except perhaps as a justification to others. When one seeks explanation for
ones own behavior, the idea that something lying outside made one act in a
particular way is more likely to be viewed as an attempt to avoid responsibility
for ones acts. If indeed it is true that social determinism is found wanting when
applied to ones own behavior and only plausible when applied to the behavior
of others, then the theory itself should be viewed with suspicion, for it fails to
16
explain ones own experiences, those with which one is most familiar. If any
theory fails to explain ones own experiences, it may be that it explains
nobodys experiences. Any theory that creates a division beween the theorist
and those theorized about and that can only explain the latter contains some
basic flaw.
Wrong argues that the process of internalization is not nearly as
inevitable or as unproblematic as some sociologists take it to be. Indeed
social ideas do become a part of the individual through internalization, but
such a process is always incomplete and tentative. A focus on
internalization also ignores other forces in the social world that encourage
rule-following behavior. People certainly do follow rules they have
internalized, but they are not compelled to do so for one indeed may violate
rules in which one believes. And people also follow rules they have not
internalized, as when they engage in or forgo behavior in order to avoid
punishment. In studies of social control, sociologists certainly recognize that
the existence of punishment can inhibit occurrences of behavior in which
people might otherwise engage, but discussions of socialization customarily
minimize this aspect of rule-following.
While recognizing the two different aspects of socializationcreation of
group members and creation of the selfWrong emphasizes that these two
processes are not identical and in any given instance may be either antithetical
or sympathetic. Sociologists have focused on the sympathetic dimension of this
processwhats good for the group is good for the individual; Freud (see
especially Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930) focused on the antithetical
dimension, the sacrifices the group requires of the self. Wrong urges a more
balanced view which, while more ambiguous and complex, is more reflective of
the social worlds in which we live and act.
Further Criticisms
Against the background of the concepts of initial and secondary
socialization and Wrongs criticisms, we can now consider specific
objections that can be made to the concept of socialization. The Bergers
presentation in the foregoing chapter is by no means the naive approach to
the topic Wrong faults; indeed it displays many insights. Nonetheless, their
rendition of the socialization process includes a number of commonly made
claims that can be viewed as problematic. The objections that can be made
to their presentation are even more applicable to less clear and sophisticated
formulations.
The Bergers* retain the notions of children as empty buckets and the agents
of socialization as routinely successful in their endeavors. They claim that
children as a matter of course accept the patterns that surround them as the

* In this discussion, particular attention is focused on those passages in the Bergerss
article that were printed in bold type.
17
only possible patterns, for those patterns are experienced in a very absolute
way (Berger and Berger, p. 6). Although examples can be offered in abundance
to show that children do experience their own ways in absolute terms, as the
only waysthe author was reprimanded by a 3-year-old for making a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich the wrong way, putting the peanut butter on one
slice of bread and the jelly on another rather than putting the jelly on the peanut
butterthe issue to be raised here is not: Can children experience the world in
absolute terms? for indeed they can, but: Must they do so? Over-dependence on
the notion of socialization impedes the very asking of such a question.
Evidence also exists, however, that children do experience at least some
aspects of their world in their own terms and in contrast to others views,
providing children with at least the possibility of relativism. Food
preferences may serve as one example, for the youngest of children may
display likes and dislikes that defy adult efforts at modification and that
those children maintain into adulthood, when they have more power to
carry through on their own preferences. One might argue that food
preferences can be biologically based; other examples, however, can be
offered. Children who always wanted a pet may resist all adult efforts to
eradicate the idea and may find in adulthood that they both enjoy having a
pet and feel they would have done so in childhood. Childrens conceptions
of the aesthetic and practical qualities of insects can be quite at odds with
the views of those with whom they associate; where then do their ideas
come from? (To suggest that ideas come from peers simply pushes the
problem back a step. Where did peers get their ideas?) In a more general
sense, children may perceive a diffuse sense of a gap or a wrong in their
lives. That they do not have the power to implement their alternative views
and that adults can deny that there is any gap or wrong does not mean
that children accept the world around them in absolute terms; it only means
that they appear to do so.
The assumption that agents of socialization are routinely successful in their
endeavors is captured in the Bergers statement that the probable outcome of
any conflict [between child and adult] is a victory on the part of the adults
(Berger and Berger, p. 6). Rather than making assumptions about the results of
any such conflicts, it would be more scientific to take such outcomes as
problematic. What constitutes victory, what defeat? For whom is a midnight
feeding a victory? When the outcome of adult/child conflicts is viewed as
problematic, it becomes possible to consider, for instance, the power resources
that children have available to them, resources that may make it possible for
them to achieve victories. Childrens resources may differ from those available
to adults but they are not thereby either negligible or ineffective. Adult power
over children ultimately rests on the fact that they have control over childrens
life and death; conversely, children have the power to diepower that failure-
to-thrive children might be said to display. The results of attempts to bottle-feed
a child accustomed to the breast are not so certain as the Bergers claim would
suggest.
What are the criteria for judging the success of socialization? One such
criterion might be parental claims of their own success: My children turned out
just the way I wanted them to. Such claims are so rare that they can hardly be
put forward as self-evident proof that socialization is routinely successful. In
18
the absence of criteria for judging the success of socialization, any such claims
appear more a matter of faith than evidence. Empirical study of the success and
failure of various socialization endeavors would seem necessary before any
scientific claims could be made.
Although it might seem that knowledge drawn from the natural sciences
could inform the notion of socialization, rendering it more scientific, in fact
the natural sciences themselves are not immune to the social context in
which they develop. Medical statements, to all appearances scientific, are
made about childrens needs. Such apparently absolute claims, however,
routinely embody, albeit implicitly, conditional claims: these needs must be
fulfilled if one is to emerge a human being of the kind recognizable in the
biologists society and if one is to avoid certain outcomes judged as negative
in that society. Children need three balanced meals a day only if they are to
have access to the health advantages deemed important in a given society.
But not all societies structure food consumption around three mealssome
have fewer, some moreand what is viewed as an avoidable nutritional or
medical problem in one society can be viewed, in another society, as
unavoidable or even normal. In the not too distant past in the US, it was
normal for a woman to lose at least some of the children she bore to
childhood diseasesso normal that the answer to the question How many
children do you have? could routinely be Seven living.
Statements drawn from the natural sciences about childrens abilities and
inabilities may well serve as blinders, preventing the recognition of what
children can do, especially those children who do that which science tends to
assume they cannot. Child prodigies6-year-old mathematicians and virtuoso
violinistsare taken to be exceptional. Would there be more child prodigies if
they were seen as normal? There are societies where 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds live
almost entirely without adult supervision, where 13-year-old females routinely
bear and rear children, and where young children themselves have the care and
responsibility of those younger. Whether or not such practices are desirable is a
moral issue that has no relevance for whether or not the practices are possible,
as indeed they are. That people in the US do not socialize children to be mothers
at age 13 obviously does not mean that they cannot be mothers. To see negative
implications of such practices and to choose to avoid them does not drive them
out of existence as possibilities.
Many of the criticisms that can be directed to the concept of socialization
have in common their source in sociologists failures to explore their taken-for-
granted assumptions about their own social worlds and in particular about
children in those social worlds. In Chapter 5 I describe some of the assumptions
that adults make about children that, when made by sociologists, can distort
the data they collect. In the next section I detail three notable and consequential
assumptions that are embedded in socialization as it is used conceptually by
sociologists.
19
Taken-for-granted Assumptions
The sociological literature on socialization embodies two assumptions, seldom
investigated or even recognized, that are embodied in the following two
renditions of the same sentence:

Parents routinely socialize their children.
Parents routinely socialize their children.

With respect to the first formulation, indeed it does happen throughout the
world that the biological parents of children rear those children. And it also
happens that children are reared primarily by others: step-parents, adoptive
parents, foster parents, one parent (and the usage of the term parent in all these
terms should not delude us into thinking those to whom the term is applied are
interchangeable and the same), siblings, other relatives, friends, affiliates of
social service and charitable agencies, nannies and nursemaids, day care
workers, and so on. The assumption in the sociological literature, however, is
that parents or those acting like parents (whatever that might entail) are the
primary agents of socialization. (See both Robertson, 1989 and Vander
Zanden, 1990 for discussions of the family as the major agent of initial
socialization.) Support for the assumption that sociologists have made about
the primacy of parents, however, is provided far more by the ideological status
of the family in the US and in the West in general than by the data. A fresh look
at arrangements throughout the world and a genuine asking of the question
Who socializes children? would seem to be in order.
The claim that parents routinely socialize their children can be read in a
second way, emphasizing not parents but the term socialize. Such a reading
brings to light a second unexamined assumption, namely that parents routinely
socialize their children. The first issue to raise here is: How is socializing
children to be distinguished from the other activities that adults direct towards
children? Could one, for example, reasonably ask on a questionnaire: How
much time per day do you spend socializing your children? If socialization is
viewed as an intentional activity engaged in by an agent of socialization,
perhaps the questionnaire question could be answered. If, on the other hand,
socialization is viewed as the outcome of myriad activities, intentional and
unintentional, successful and unsuccessful, measured only by manifestations in
adult behavior, and if socialization is so inextricably linked to child-rearing in
general, how can it be studied sociologically as an independent phenomenon?
Although it is certainly the case in the US, for instance, that the task of
socializing children is ideologically and legally assigned to the parents of those
children, it does not follow that those parents always and necessarily do
socialize their children. Indeed such an inference is contradicted by ample
evidence of parents who neglect their children (in the sense of ignoring them),
whose acts towards children are directed largely to controlling them (in the
sense of preventing them from being a disruption to adult activities), or whose
notion of socializing children departs radically from the social norms (as can
been seen in the regularly appearing stories in sensational newspapers of
children caged, chained, etc. for their own good). That children learn from
their experiences is indisputable, but the application of the term socialization to
20
the above examples appears to be a distortion of either the concept or the
experiences or both. Can children who have the kinds of experiences described
in this paragraph be said to be socialized? If so, by whom? And to what?
In descriptions of socialization, adults are likely to appear as deity-like
figures, solely concerned with the welfare of their charges and subsuming
their own needs to those of children. Adults appear as kindly, loving, both
motivated to socialize children to the broader society and equal to that task.
Such a glowing picture has far more in common with an ideological than a
scientific formulation. Interestingly enough, when examples are provided of
children who have been isolated from human contact, caged, chained, etc.,
attention centers on what can be learned about the importance of
socialization for children. Such examples can also be, though seldom are,
read as challenges to the view that all adults actively and competently
socialize their children.
Yet a third taken-for-granted assumption underlying socialization is that
there is only one available social groupcommonly termed societyto which
one can be socialized. While the sociological literature on deviance does address
the issue of groups competing to socialize individuals, e.g. the family and the
gang, such competition is not routinely addressed in theoretical presentations of
the concept of socialization. When it is addressed, it tends to be as an
explanation of some particular discrepancya good child from a bad home,
a bad child from a good homerather than as a general feature of the
socialization process. An assumption of social homogeneity obscures
consideration of the groups that might compete for individuals, but once such
competition is recognized as a possibility, it can be sought in such situations as
disagreements in child-rearing between spouses, between parents and teachers
(see, for example, Goode with Waksler, 1990), between church and state, and
between and among any competing groups which in some sense have access to
the same individual.
Taken-for-granted assumptions embodied in the idea that parents socialize
children obscure from view the many situations where socialization is done by
others and where parents activities directed towards children are either
occasionally or primarily oriented to goals other than socialization. The
assumption that there is only one groupsocietyto which one is socialized
obscures from view alternative groups, groups that may well vie with one
another for members/followers.
Socialization and Beyond
In the foregoing I have presented some fundamental criticisms of the notion
of socialization. Pervading the presentation is the idea that socialization as
it is generally employed by sociologists obscures from view significant
aspects of childrens and adults social behavior. Refinement of the concept
by setting as problematic aspects heretofore taken for granted as true could
make some of these aspects available for study. In reconceptualizing
socialization I would recommend directing particular attention to the
following kinds of questions:
21
1 Is socialization the name for an identifiable and documentable process
or is it the name for an assumption made to organize a wide range of
activities?
2 In what respects are the socialization of children and adults (both
initial and secondary) different processes and in what respects are they
similar?
3 When socialization is taking place, what is the one being socialized
doing at the timeboth with reference to the socialization process and
to other projects that person has in mind?
4 Are children empty buckets who readily contain what is poured into
them? If not, and I suspect that there is general sociological agreement
that they are not, what do they contain and what are the implications
of these contents for socialization?
5 Is socialization best understood as a one-way process between an agent
of socialization and an object of socialization or is it better conceived
of as a reciprocal relationship with each influencing the other?
6 Are agents of socialization routinely successful in their endeavors?
What are the criteria for judging the success of socialization?
Setting as problematic the outcomes of socialization would seem to
be a more scientific approach than making assumptions about those
outcomes.
7 Who routinely socializes children? How, specifically, do they go about
it? Taking these to be empirical questions rather than rhetorical ones
would seem fruitful.
8 Of the many activities that adults and children participate in together,
which ones can be identified as socialization? Which ones cannot?
9 Is there only one group (society) to which children are socialized or are
there alternative groups, groups which may well vie with one another
for members/followers? If there is competition and conflict,
documentation would seem to be in order.
10 How can socialization best be studied to preserve the integrity of the
fundamental sociological questions (e.g. those identified by Wrong)?

Even if the concept of socialization were modified to take into account the
questions posed above, it could never encompass the entirety of childrens
experiences, for children do more than get socialized. To expect any
single concept to have such range and such explanatory power is in all
likelihood unreasonable. Just as the concept of family does not explain all
of the experiences of family members, and just as the concept of deviance
omits the non-deviant aspects of those labeled deviant, the concept of
socialization omits aspects of childrens behavior (and of adults behavior
as well). In particular it leaves out both what children are doing when
others are socializing them, and when others are not. It neglects the
worlds that children design by themselves for themselves. It fails to
examine childrens ideas and activities as their ways of being in the world.
Furthermore, these omissions are not shortcomings of the concept itself
and cannot be rectified by modifying the concept; they are a necessary
consequence of the fact that socialization is only one way of looking at
children.
22
Thus I recommend moving beyond socialization to consider other ways of
looking at childrens lives. No systematic theoretical guidelines are readily
available in the sociological literature, but some guidelines are explicit in the
work of a number of sociologists. Two major approachers can be inferred from
that work: 1) to consider studies conducted from an adult perspective not as
findings about children but as data on how adults can view children and thus on
the adult worlds in which children live (a perspective I have labeled children in
an adult world) and 2) to conduct studies from childrens perspectives (a
perspective I refer to as children in a childs world). The selections in Parts II
and III of this book provide examples of both of these perspectives and thus of
what can be learned about children by going beyond socialization.
Endnote
In this chapter I have raised criticisms about the ways that sociologists have
studied children and indicated alternative approaches. Before considering data
from those alternative perspectives, however, it will be helpful to learn what
other sociological critics have to recommend. In Chapter 3 Mackay, drawing on
data gathered in a classroom setting, shows the complexity and subtlety of the
knowledge children need to possess simply to carry out classroom tasks,
features that are obscured when one limits oneself to an adult perspective. In
Chapter 4 Mandell shows some of the practical problems that arose when,
studying children in a day care center, she focused on their perspectives and
took them seriously as actors in social worlds. In Chapter 5 I detail some of the
taken-for-granted assumptions that adults make about children, assumptions
that impede understanding children in their own terms. Although the three
remaining chapters in Part I raise a number of theoretical issues, they also
provide abundant data about childrens worlds and lives so that as readers gain
theoretical insights, they can apply those insights to data as well as to the
experiences and examples they are able to generate themselves.
23

Chapter 3

Conceptions of Children and
Models of Socialization
Robert W.Mackay
Commentary
In this article Mackay provides a new perspective for looking at children, based
on recognition of an adult perspective as one way rather than the only way to
do so. He begins by offering fundamental criticism of the concept of
socialization, casting doubt on its very validity. He suggests that socialization
is an adult formulation or creation based on the taken-for-granted assumption
that adults are knowledgeable and competent actors in the social world while
children are incomplete, incompetent, and lack knowledge. He argues that by
focusing on socialization, researchers and theorists have failed to notice the rich
and varied interactions that take place between adults and children as equally
social beings. Similar criticisms might also be directed to the more
psychological formulations of child development, which tend to embody an
implicit notion of adult superiority.
Mackays article is intellectually very radical, with some perhaps disturbing
practical implications. He is suggesting that children can be viewed as fully
social beings, capable of acting in the social world and of creating and
sustaining their own culture (a point that is documented by Iona and Peter Opie
in Chapter 10). He does not suggest that children must be viewed only in their
own terms. He does, however, provide an option to the commonsense
assumption, embodied seemingly without investigation into sociological and
social science thought, that children are only incomplete adults and that
adulthood is the goal of childhood. This new option is exemplified in the set of
readings provided in this book, Part II considering children from an adult
perspective while Part III takes the perspective of children themselves.
The previously published version of this article included an Appendix in
which is presented a conversation between a teacher and a student about the
story of Chicken Little. I have set this conversation at the beginning of the
article so that readers can compare their initial impressions of itperhaps that it
From H.P.Dreitzel (ed.), (1973) Recent Sociology, No. 5, Macmillan, pp. 2743 and
revised by the author for R.Turner (Ed.), (1974) Ethnomethodology, Penguin, pp. 180
193. Reprinted by permission of the author.
24
is just ordinary talk, nothing special, etc.with those they have after they
have the benefit of Mackays insights. Those unaccustomed to reading
transcriptions of talk may be surprised at just how ungrammatical it can be. Each
utterance is numberedfor example, Teacher 5, Tom 7for easier reference.
F.C.W.
Transcript of Interview (from Appendix)
During the interview the teacher is seated at her desk looking sideways into the
camera, the boy is standing beside her between her and the camera. The
sentences to be sequenced are in front of him on her desk.

Teacher 1 Pick out the ones that should come first. Which one would
come first in the story? Why did you choose that?
Tom 1 Because thats the first one.
Teacher 2 Why is it the first one?
Tom 2 Whack something fell on Chicken Littleshead I guess.
Teacher 3 Umhum. When you read the story in the book was that
the very first sentence? Was it exactly like that in
the book?
Tom 3 No.
Teacher 4 No but this does tell what happened first. Find the sentence
which would tell what happens next.
Teacher 5 Why did you choose that one?
Tom 4 Because I guess thats was what happened (next).
Teacher 6 What, who was the first animal in the story?
Tom 5 Chicken Little.
Teacher 7 And the next?
Tom 6 Henny Penny.
Teacher 8 And who came next?
Tom 7 Goosey Loosey.
Teacher 9 No, not quite, somebody else came after Henny Penny,
some
Tom 8 Cocky Locky.
Teacher 10 Cocky Locky. And then?
Tom 9 Henny.
Teacher 11 Goosey Poosey. And then, then what?
Tom 10 Turkey Lurkey.
Teacher 12 Ya in the flannel board who came story who came last?
Tom 11 Foxy Loxy.
Teacher 13 Who was not in the book that was in the flannel board story?
Tom 12 Foxy Loxy.
Teacher 14 Alright, good, alright see if you can find the sentence then
that tells best what happened after Henny Penny went with
Chicken Little.
{
25
Children and Models of Socialization
Teacher 15 Why didnt you choose this one its got Henny Penny and
Chicken Little in it.
Tom 13 Ah. Umm. Henny Penny. Cocky Locky and Chicken Little.
Cocky Locky and Goosey Poosey he he isnt here yet.
Teacher 16 Thats right.
Tom 14 Here Goosey Poosey, here boy.
Teacher 17 Thats fine Tom, just tell me quietly please you dont have
to act it out right now. There are times for acting but this is
not one of them, k.
Tom 15 They all met Goosey Poosey.
Teacher 18 Alright. Why did you choose that Four animals met Turkey
Lurkey next?
Tom 16 Because hes the last one they ( ) met.
Teacher 19 How do you know hesall the other animals like Henny
Penny and Cocky Locky are there it doesnt give their
names?
Tom 17 Because
Teacher 20 What does it say?
Tom 18 The four animals met Turkey Lurkey. There wasnt four
animals.
Teacher 21 Werent there?
Tom 19 One.
Teacher 22 Right.
Tom 20 Right.
Teacher 23 Henny Penny is.
Tom 21 One.
Teacher 24 Cocky Locky is
Tom 22 two
Teacher 25 Two.
Tom 23 Threefour.
Teacher 26 See there you are forgetting about Chicken Little he has met
three people but Chicken Littles there too so that makes an
extra one ( ). Alright what comes next? The animals have
seen Turkey Lurkey what would come next?
Teacher 27 Craig would you please take your seat.
Teacher 28 Why did you choose that. Will you read it to me please.
Tom 24 Turkey Lurkey saw a nut under a big tree.
Teacher 29 Why did you choose that instead of
Tom 25 because
Teacher 30 That one.
Tom 26 Because the the sky is not falling. He cant say it because he
doesnt know it yet.
Teacher 31 Umm. Did Turkey Lurkey know all the time that it
was a nut that fell on his headthat fell on ah
Chicken Littles tail?*
{
{
26
Tom 27 I guess so, I dont know.
Teacher 32 Humm this is interesting. What did it say in the story that
Chicken Little ah where the nut fell on Chicken Little?*
Tom 28 At the tree.
Teacher 33 Umhum what part of his body did it land on did it say?
Tom 29 Tail.
Teacher 34 Read the first sentence.
Tom 30 Whunk.
Teacher 35 Whack.
Tom 31 Whack something fell on Chicken Littles head ( )
Teacher 36 Did you notice that when you were putting the sentences
together?
Tom 32 Ya, but I always thought.
Teacher 37 In some stories it does fall on his head so it didnt bother
you did it that it said head?
Teacher 38 Have you ever heard a story where it fell on Chicken Littles
headinstead of his tail.
Tom 33 Ya.
Teacher 39 Umhum, so you understood the story and it didnt matter
about that word did it because the idea was that it fell on
Chicken Little and it was really a nut instead of ah a piece
of the sky. Thank you very much Tom.
Note on Mackays Introduction
Those new to sociology might find Mackays Introduction somewhat difficult.
Trying to talk about that which is customarily taken for granted may require
somewhat awkward and convoluted language if the taken-for-granted is to be
brought to light. In the following paragraphs I provide elaboration of the key
terms he uses in his Introduction.
Norms are expectations for behavior; normative rules prescribe how to act.
Cicourel, to whom Mackay refers, identifies two kinds of rules that guide social
behavior: normative and basic. Basic rules underlie normative ones and are
customarily taken for granted. The distinction between normative and basic
rules is complex and clarification would lead us too far astray here. The point
Mackay is making is that traditionally sociology has been normative, only
recognizing those rules that lie on the surface of social behavior and neglecting
the basic or underlying rules that make normative behavior possible. He urges
the investigation of basic rules.
Mackay is arguing that the term socialization covers a wide variety
ofactivities that sociologists do not specify but simply assume to be a part of
* This statement is consequential for what follows because the confusion between head
and tail, was introduced by the teacher, not by Tom. (Waksler)
27
that process. The term socialization glosses or slides over all these taken-for-
granted ideas. If we avoid using the term socialization, we have to be much
more specific about the activities we are considering; without the term we
cannot simply label them socialization and be done with them.
Individuals can be viewed as subjects and their perspective on their
experiences as their subjectivity. Intersubjectivity refers to the shared
experiences of individuals acting together and is evident in face-to-face
interaction where people share time, space, ideas, and activities.
Mackays discussion relies heavily on the idea of competence, which can be
understood in its everyday meaning of possessing capacities to engage in and
carry out whatever activities in which one is competent. Interpretive
competence is the ability to make sense out of activities and normative rules by
grasping their underlying structure (basic rules). Mackay argues that adults
customarily deny that children have interpretive competence while at the same
time involving them in activities that require such competencea competence
that children indeed display.
F.C.W.
Introduction*
In sociological writings characterized as normative
1
the term socialization
2
glosses the phenomenon of change from the birth of a child to maturing or old
age.
3
To observe that changes take place after birth is trivial, but the quasi-
scientific use of the term socialization masks this triviality. In fact, the study of
these changes as socialization is an expression of the sociologists common-
sense position in the world, i.e. as adults.
4
The notion of socialization leads to
theoretical formulations mirroring the adult view that children are incomplete
beings. Investigators have consequently been distracted from the important
area of study which is adult-child interaction and the underlying theoretically
important problem of intersubjectivity implied in such interaction. Writing
about the process of socialization, then, has become for me an occasion for
exploring the interaction between adults and children.
In this paper I first examine what the normative sociological study of
socialization implies both for the study of adult-child interaction and the
development of sociological theory. I then examine the interpretive approach
demonstrating that all interaction is based upon underlying interpretive
competence. The competence is not acknowledged within the normative
approach because the study of socialization takes the views of the dominant
culture (adult) and proposes them as scientific findings. It ignores the
interactional nature of adult-child relationships. Finally through the analysis of
adult-child interaction I show the interpretive competence of the child and the
paradoxical nature of interaction between adults and children where
competence is simultaneously assumed and interactionally denied.
* Terms described in the note on pages 2627 appear in this section in italic. (Waksler)
28
To BeIs To Be Socialized: The Normative Perspective
Children are incompleteimmature, irrational, incompetent, asocial, acultural
depending on whether you are a teacher, sociologist, anthropologist or
psychologist. Adults, on the other hand, are completemature, rational,
competent, social, and autonomous unless they are acting-like-children.
5
Introductory texts (e.g. Broom and Selznick, 1968; Horton and Hunt, 1968) in
the social sciences suggest that without language and culture new born infants
are not human because language creates minds and selves (Broom and
Selznick, 1968, p. 96). An implication is that children who are profoundly
retarded or severely brain damaged are never human.
For the sociologist, to be human is to be socialized. To be socialized is to
acquire roles (see, e.g. Brim, 1968; Clausen, 1968; Elkin and Handel, 1960;
Inkeles, 1966; Parsons and Bales, 1955). To be (human) is transformed by
sociologists into, to be (roles). But such theorizing is not an indifferent
practice. As I have suggested in the Introduction and note 4, it is the
formulation of the writers own view of the world (i.e. his self). Considered
thus, to conceive of being human as being roles is to conceive an eviscerated
view of life. The consequence of this is that, under the auspices of current
formulations of socialization, the conception of children as essentially
deficient vis--vis adults has, in practice, led to no research into children
qua children and it has served to, scientifically, warrant common-sense
conceptions of children as incomplete. When adult-child interaction is
formulated as the process of socialization, children as a phenomenon
disappear and sociologists reveal themselves as parents writing slightly
abstract versions of their own or other children.
Socialization is a gloss (see note 2) which precludes the explication of the
phenomenon it glosses, i.e. the interaction between adults and children. This
glossing is characteristic of normative sociologys reliance on the commonsense
world as both topic and resource.
6
As Zimmerman and Pollner (1970, p. 82)
indicate,

Sociologys acceptance of the lay members formulation of the formal and
substantive features of sociologys topical concerns makes sociology an
integral feature of the very order it seeks to describe. It makes sociology
into an eminently folk discipline deprived of any prospect or hope of
making fundamental structures of folk activity a phenomenon.

This confounding is illustrated in the following quotation.

In other words both the practice and study of child socialization are
forward looking. It seems obvious, furthermore, that of the various,
later stages which socialization looks forward to, it is the personally
relatively enduring and socially important adult stage which is the critical
one to consider. Therefore, a central task of the study of socialization is to
enquire into the effects which the experience of the child has on the
shaping of the adult. (Inkeles, 1968, pp. 767; emphasis added)

29
The terms adults and children are borrowed from the common-sense world
by sociologists, but if they are viewed as theoretical formulations, then a
very serious problem emerges. That is, to suggest theoretically that there are
adults and children is to imply that to pass from one stage to the other is to
pass from one ontological order to another.
7
The passage from one
ontological order to another is also suggested in the formulation of the
world as static
8
and as constituted by successive discrete stageschildhood
and adulthood, incompleteness and completeness, lack of agreement and
shared agreement (see note 1). If each of these ontological orders implies, on
the level of social life, different communicative competencies, then the
traditional formulations of socialization make communication between
adults and children impossible, since they are assumed not to share common
interpretive abilities.
I am suggesting that in the socialization literature the confounding of the
common-sense world as topic and resource has resulted in the unavailability for
sociologists of interaction between adults and children as a phenomenon of
study. The phenomenon of study is adult-child interaction and how it is
accomplished.
The Interpretive Perspective
For two days I watched some sixty children between the ages of three
and six joyfully writing stories of their own, making up poems,
exploring the typewriter keyboard and reading paragraphs based on
their own conversations. They did this as spontaneously as young
children ask questions. I realized then that I had stumbled onto
something more important than the mechanical ability to read a few
words. Evidently tiny youngsters could reason, invent and acquire
knowledge far better than most adults suspected. If they could learn
this much through exposure to the talking typewriter for only half an
hour a day, the potentialities of preschool children were almost
limitless. (Pines, 1966, p. ix)

I take this quotation to represent what might be sociologists similar
surprise at the ability of children to reason, invent and acquire knowledge,
that is, at their interpretive competencies. In contrast to the study of
socialization suggested by normative sociology (discussed in the previous
section) work in interpretive sociology (see, e.g. Cicourel, 1970b; Garfinkel,
1967; Holt, 1969, Labov, 1972; Neill, 1960; Schutz, 1962) restores the
interaction between adults and children based on interpretive competencies
as the phenomenon of study.
9
Without reviewing the literature in this area
(see especially Cicourel, 1970, 1972; Garfinkel, 1967), the interpretive
perspective posits interpretive and surface rules,
10
the reflexive articulation
of which enables people to assign meaning to the world, The complexity of
the world and its orderliness is seen to rest on persons (adults and
children
11
) interpretive competencies. The focus of investigation is how
persons display the meaningfulness of the world.
30
A demonstration of childrens interpretive competencies can be found in
research conducted in a grade one classroom.
12
After completing a statewide
reading test designed to measure reading and inference skills, children were
asked by researchers how they had decided on answers. The children often
linked the stimulus sentence and the answer in ways which the test
constructor had not meant but which demonstrated their inference/
interpretive skills in providing reasonable accounts of the world. For
example, the stimulus sentence of one test item was about an animal that
had been out in the rain. The correct answer was a picture of a room with
dotted wallpaper walls and a floor imprinted with a trail of animal tracks.
When the child was asked what the picture was about, she replied, Its
snowing. When questioned about the design on the wallpaperDo you
know what these are?she replied, sprinkles. The child had perceived the
picture to be the exterior of a house with snow falling rather than the
interior of a house covered with dotted wallpaper. Because of this
misperception she had chosen an answer which while it was reasonable
within the frame of reference was the wrong answer. While the child
demonstrated the inference/interpretive skills that were claimed to be
measured by the test, no credit was given for this item. This research
13
makes clear that children possess interpretive competencies undiscerned in
standard research. The interpretive perspective makes available, then,
children as beings who interpret the world as adults do. By revealing the
childs competencies, it transforms a theory of deficiency into a theory of
competency.
In addition to suggesting that children are competent interpreters in the
world, I want to suggest that they are also in possession of their own culture or
succession of cultures. Although the evidence for this is only fragmentary, the
Opies have presented the most convincing case for the existence of separate
cultures.
14
[See Chapter 10 of this book.] Aries (1965) also points to the
possibility of separate childrens cultures and their changing particularity over
time (see also Plump, 1971).
If the two claims are correct, that children are competent interpreters of the
social world and that they possess a separate culture(s), then the study of adult-
child interaction (formerly socialization) becomes substantively the study of
cultural assimilation, and theoretically the study of meaningful social interaction.
Adult-Child Interaction
I have suggested that adult-child interaction is problematic because of cultural
differences. Hall (1959) has documented that problems arising out of poor
cultural translation can have serious practical outcomes (i.e.
misunderstandings, breaches). Teachers and other adults remain cultural
strangers to the world of children and their interaction with children often
results in the generic type of misunderstandings that Hall describes.
16
I have
argued on two fronts, first that understanding between two separate cultures
requires adequate translation and second the all human interaction rests on the
participants interpretive abilities. On a theoretical level, however, there is no
difference between these two.
17
31
I turn now to an analysis of a specific occasion of interaction between an
adult and a child which indicates how understanding based on interpretive
abilities is built up through the course of the interaction. The teacher treats the
child as a cultural stranger while relying on his adult competencies to
understand the lesson and review. The following excerpts
18
are from a written
transcript of the audio portion of a video taped interview between a grade one
teacher and one child in her class [provided at the beginning of this chapter]. In
the interview, which took place at the end of the lunch hour, the teacher is
asking the child about the assignment distributed earlier in the morning. This
assignment was to sequence a series of dittoed sentences which were either
taken verbatim or paraphrased from the story read before lunch. In the lesson
and assignment the teacher had been concerned with introducing the concept of
sequencing to the children. The interview was carried out at the request of the
researchers to find out how the child would describe his understanding of the
lesson and assignment.
Instruction: Understanding as the Location of the Correct
Answer
Given the working assumption that children are tabula rasa* beings on which to
etch programmes, teachers and other adults ignore the fact that understanding
rests upon ongoing reflexive, constructed, convergence of schemata of
interpretation (see Garfinkel, 1967; Schutz, 1962). In the transcript it can be seen
that the teacher acts as though the world is a static (i.e. not dialectical) place in
which she can move the child cognitively from point A to point B while ignoring
the childs contributions. In the lesson and review her concern was with moving
him from a state of not knowing the concept of sequencing to a state of knowing
the concept of sequencing. The teacher thus treats the child as empty of
knowledge (i.e. correct answers) and moves him from this state of emptiness to a
state of fullness (i.e. knowledge), a process she accomplishes by asking questions
and reformulating them until the child gives the correct answer. In some instance
the teacher not only asks the questions but also finally gives the correct answers
(see Teacher 39, page 26). Instruction is the occasion for adults to exercise their
preference for a certain meaning of the world for the child. The child as more or
less passive in the situation is involved only is so far as he is conceived to be an
organism capable of memory.
19
The child can/must remember the instructions
(i.e. in this case the lesson).
Childrens Interpretive Competence
I am using interpretive competence in an analytic sense to refer to the ability
to use interpretive procedures to assign meaning to the world
* Tabula rasa is the Latin for blank slate and suggests the idea that I presented in
Chapter 2 as the empty bucket theory. (Waksler)
32
(Cicourel,1970b, esp. pp. 14757; Garfinkel, 1967, esp. ch. 1).* I
demonstrate in the following sections that children possess the same
interpretive abilities as adults do.
Competence as the Teachers Assumption
The teacher assumes the childs interpretive competence in doing lessons
and reviews. One example of this assumption of interpretive competence in
the transcript is when the teacher (Teacher 14) asks Tom see if you can
find the sentence that tells best where best implies the careful evaluation
of the total situation, i.e. the exercise of those abilities she herself uses to
decide which is best. This assumption by adults of childrens interpretive
competence can be found even in situations where children are considered
unlikely ever to be competent. For example, in one research study (Mayer,
1967) with mentally retarded children (measured IQ between 50 and 75)
the researcher administered a measure which consisted of a list of twenty-
two personality traits. The children were to rank themselves on a five point
scale for each item. The format was:

I am happy, clean, lazy, etc. /not at all/not very often/some of the time/
most of the time/all of the time

The researcher assumes that these children have interpretive competence if he
assumes that they are able to reflect upon their personalities-as-traits and
then rate them on a five-point scale. After the measurement is completed it is
assumed that the aggregated measure of self-concept is of persons unable to
reason wellthey are, after all, mentally retarded.
The teacher assumes the childs interpretive competencies at every point. In
the transcript this is especially clear in the segments following.

Teacher 39 Umhum, so you understood the story and it didnt make
any difference about that word did it because the idea was
that it fell on Chicken Little and it was really a nut instead of
ah a piece of the sky. Thank you very much Tom.

The above segment was uttered at about 1:05 p.m. The segment below was said
by the teacher about 10:45 a.m. the same morning in reference to the story of
Chicken Little she was about to tell them.
* Cicourel and Garfinkel make the point that knowing surface (normative) rules is not
enough to enable people to follow them. People must also understand basic rules that
tell them how to follow the surface rules. I may know that it is wrong to steal but
interpretive rules allow me to decide in any particular situation whether or not an act is
indeed stealing. Mackay is arguing that children use interpretive rules even when they
use these rules to arrive at answers different from those of adults. (Waksler)
33
Teacher My story might be a little bit different from the way you
heard it, the names might be different but the ideas are
the same.

In both segments she is assuming that what she is saying is obvious, i.e.
she does not elaborate, ask if it is clear, etc. She is asserting that ideas
subsume many different words and names and in doing so eliminates what
appears to be a difference. It is important to note that this is a more
complex notion to grasp than the one that she makes the topic of the
lessona concretized presentation of sequencing. What I am proposing is
that she is assuming in an analytic sense the interpretive procedures which
define competence. The following describes one aspect of interpretive
competence and it is clear in the above segments that the teacher assumes
this ability of the child.

A corollary of this property (reciprocity of perspectives) is that members
assume, and assume others assume of them, that their descriptive accounts
or utterances will be intelligible and recognizable features of the world
known in common and taken for granted. (Cicourel, 1970b, p. 147)

When the two segments are considered together it can be seen that she is also
assuming that the child can remember the earlier utterance and find the
principle of consistency in the lesson, assuming that her use of the word idea in
the later utterance is a tacit reference back to the earlier utterance as a way of
finding the mistake to be irrelevant to the sense of the lesson. (The mistake is
discussed more fully below.) Here the teacher has assumed further interpretive
competence, viz. the ability to search retrospectively (Cicourel, 1970b, p. 149)
for the sense of the present utterance.
I offer the following segment as a final example of the childs interpretive
competence.

Teacher 32 Humm this is interesting. What did it say in the story that
Chicken Little ah where the nut fell on Chicken Little.
Tom 28 At the tree.
Teacher 33 Umhum what part of his body did it land on did it say?

Tom has formulated the correct answer to the question where was
Chicken Little when the nut fell? i.e. the location of Chicken Little was
the scheme of interpretation. While this is a correct interpretation of her
question the teacher treats it as incorrect by invoking her own scheme of
interpretation Where on the body of Chicken Little did the nut fall?
While interpretive ability is demonstrated by Tom in that he articulates
the particular words of the teacher with a frame of reference which allows
a reasonable answer to the question, what is also demonstrated is that
adults can pre-empt the interaction with children for their own purposes
without explanation. For example, the teacher might have said to another
adult Oh no, what I meant was where on Chicken Littles body. The
teacher not only has the power to ignore reasonable answers but also
34
assumes more competence of the child than of an adult, i.e. that he can
figure out both that and why his answer was wrong and the other answer
correct.
Understanding as Evidenceable
The paradigmatic example of verifying a childs understanding is found in
Socrates encounter with the boy in The Meno (see Plato, 1956, pp. 489):
Socrates Very well. How many times the small one is the whole space.
Boy Four times.
Socrates But we wanted a double space, dont you remember?
Boy Oh, yes I remember.
Socrates Then here is a line running from corner to corner, cutting
each of the spaces in two parts.
Boy Yes.
Socrates Are not these four lines equal and dont they contain this
space within them?
Boy Yes that is right.

The verification of the boys understanding is in the answer yes. The Meno can
be read as a monologue and the yes answer by the boy as Socrates own
production. A similar example is found in the transcript, beginning with
Teacher 32 and ending at dismissal of Tom. The segment begins with the
teachers recognition that she has made a mistake, Humm this is interesting.
She has incorrectly written the sentence on the assignment sheet to read that the
nut fell on Chicken Littles head while in the story it fell on his tail. The rest of
the segment is the teachers attempt to find out if the error made any difference
in Toms understanding of the lesson. What is important, however, is that
beginning at Tom 32 it is absolutely clear that Tom no longer has any part in the
interaction (i.e. it becomes a monologue); perhaps he no longer even knows
what is going on although at the end the teacher seems convinced that Tom
understood.

Tom 32 Ya but I always thought.
Teacher 37 In some stories it does fall on his head so it didnt bother you
that it said head?
Teacher 38 Have you ever heard a story where it falls on Chicken
Littles headinstead of his tail?
Tom 33 Ya.
Teacher 39 Umhum, so you understood the story and it didnt matter
about that word did it because the idea was that it fell on
Chicken Little and it was really a nut instead of ah a piece of
the sky. Thank you very much Tom.
35
A viewing of the videotape
20
reveals that Toms sentence Ya but I always
thought did not end unfinished because the teacher interrupted but was a
complete utterance. What is evident from the tape is that Tom turns his eyes
from looking at the teacher down to the desk in front of him when he concludes
the utterance. He continues to look down in this manner until the end of the
interview. When he utters Ya (Tom 33) it is softly and he does not look up.
This is in marked contrast to the rest of the interview where he meets the eyes of
the teacher whenever her gives an answer. The teacher, however, continues to
find his understanding even though he is no longer a participant. The teacher
appropriates the interaction and asserts the childs understanding. In doing this
she provides for both speakers and suspends the possibility of the childs use of
his interpretive competencies in the interaction, i.e. the child is treated as
incompetent. The teacher asserts that Tom has understood you
understood and points out why because the idea, not the word, was
what mattered. The assertions imply the teachers assumption of the childs
interpretive competence to figure out the sense, i.e. understand.
Thus, throughout the interview, the teacher guides the child to the correct
answers and finds in the answers the sense of the lesson which constitutes the
evidence of its success, i.e. that the child understood. What is equally important
is that the teacher finds both her own competence qua teacher and the childs
understanding in the pre-constituted structure of the lesson, i.e. there are no
surprises.
21
The Paradox
The analysis has revealed the paradoxical
22
nature of adult-child interaction.
On the one hand, the teacher relies on the childs interpretive competencies to
understand the lesson but, on the other, treats him throughout as incompetent
(i.e. she creates or gives the correct answers). The child is treated as deficient
as he is under the normative sociological view of children. The sociological view
and the teachers view are characterized by the fact that they are eminently
common-sensical. As such, sociological writings on adult-child interaction are
not theoretical but part of the very order that was intended for description
(Garfinkel, 1967, ch. 1). Seeing the childs interpretive competencies implies
that the interpretive theory applies to both adult-adult and adult-child
interaction. Differences between the two types of interaction are not theoretical
but substantive. Substantively, the phenomena of study are (a) the ways in
which adults attribute incompetence to children and create situations for its
manifestation, and (b) the structure of childrens culture. Theoretically, the
phenomenon of study is the interpretive basis of intersubjectivity.
Notes
1 Here I follow the formulations of normative found in Cicourel (1970a) and
Wilson (1970).
2 I use the concept gloss throughout this paper in opposition to the concept explicate.
I follow the usage found in Garfinkel (1967, p. 33).
36
3 Persons concerned with adult socialization see all of life as a process of socialization.
For instance see Brim (1968).
4 What I am suggesting here is the same as Alan Blum has elegantly formulated, that
Through theorizing the theorist searches for his self, and his achievement in
theorizing is a recovery of this self (Blum, 1970, p. 304).
5 The problem with children is that they dont think like adults or so it seems in the
vast literature on socialization, child rearing and its popular, and usually more
empirical, variants in Spock, Ginst, etc. But then not thinking like adults could be
applied to other large segments of the worldthe people next door, this or that
group. There is an extensive literature on how to train children, I suppose because
they are smaller and less powerful. A similar argument could be applied to the poor,
mental patients and prisoners, a similar literature supports this view. Incomplete
socialization, deviance, etc. are particular sociological ways of indicating this.
6 An excellent paper which makes this distinction clear is Zimmerman and Pollner (1970).
7 This formulation is based upon a footnote to be found in Merleau-Ponty (1964).
8 Both theory and measurement in sociology formulate the world as static. For
example, ideal types and questionnaires take a moment in time and freeze it. If the
world was not dynamic this would be adequate but since change is constant the
models of the world and their concomitant measurement systems are inadequate.
Often what passes for theory in sociology are only high level abstractions from
which anything can be deduced through the application of anyones common-sense
knowledge of the world. Measurement systems are misconceived in any event
because they do not measure but constitute the phenomenon. Consequently
measurement is by fiat and the world remains to be described.
9 This perspective implies a notion of liberation and as such offers the intellectual
possibility of freeing children as political prisoners. See especially the writings of
Holt, Labov, and Neill.
10 This formulation is particularly Cicourels based on his critique of Chomsky.
11 Particularly important to the discussion of children is Cicourels article mentioned
above (Cicourel, 1970b).
12 For a fuller report of the work referred to see Mackay (1974).
13 For further demonstration of childrens competencies see Mehan (1971), Roth
(1972) and a related work by Labov (1969).
14 Opie and Opie (1959). The idea of separate childrens culture was suggested by
Harvey Sacks in a lecture at a conference on Language, society and the child,
Berkeley, 1968. Also see Spier (n.d.).
15 The data reported here is part of a larger study that was supported by a Ford
Foundation Grant, Aaron V.Cicourel Principal Investigator. Although this research
was conceived in part to study childrens communicative competencies, the
videotapes which were taken focus on the teachers face with the result that often the
children have their backs to the camera. In the segment reported on in this paper the
teachers face is clear but when the child looks at the teacher his back is to the
camera. This is in part, I would suggest, because of the ubiquity of the adult view of
the world mirrored in the organization of the classroom which makes shooting
videotapes towards the children almost impossible.
16 Hall (1959, pp. 913). It should also be noted here that culturally different persons
who are serious about understanding each other spend long periods of time working
out the translation problems. A good example is an anthropologist doing field
work. I can think of no similar attempts on the part of teachers and other adults to
understand children.
17 Cultural differences may add an element of practical difficulty created by the
problems of doing adequate translation but this is not a principled difference. I am
following Cicourels formulation of interpretive abilities as invariant. Under this
formulation culture differences are surface rules. See Cicourel (1970b).
37
18 The reader is asked to consult the full transcript presented in the appendix in order
to locate the excerpts in the larger context of the interview.
19 A persistent feature of the common-sense world seems to be a trust in memory.
20 For a discussion of the methodological consequences of the use of videotape, see
Cicourel (1972).
21 This observation has strong implications for the educational system. Learning for
the teacher is to find evidence of its accomplishment now (during the lesson and
review). When later on (i.e. grade 5) the child demonstrates the ability covered in the
grade one lesson it is assumed that the genesis of the ability was in the lesson and not
in his ability to learn it somewhere. By referring to somewhere, I mean to point out
that the child has competencies to figure out the world in a variety of different ways
and in a variety of settings. The assumption of the importance of the lesson provides
the raison detre for formal instruction to be located in organizations called schools.
If the focus in schools is on the practical organizational activities here and now, how
can these activities produce children committed to the pursuit of knowledge in a
larger and more temporally extensive sense? Practically, how is it possible under
these circumstances to get children to see that the material learned in schools
applies beyond its walls?
22 A major assumption of this paper is that phenomena maintain a transparency of
being more than one thing at once. Although the phenomenon is unitary the various
parts seem sequential when talked or written about. For some phenomenologists
(Merleau-Ponty, 1962) this is regarded as the perspectival nature of experience and
for the Zen monk the unity of experience. One of the most dramatic examples of a
phenomenon being two things at once is Carlos Castanedas experiences using
smoke (reported in Castaneda, 1971).
38

Chapter 4

The Least-Adult Role in Studying
Children
Nancy Mandell
Commentary
In this article Mandell describes some of the practical problems that she
encountered in her sociological study of children. By adopting the kind of
perspective described in the preceding two chapters (Waksler and Mackay), she
achieved new insights into what she calls childrens ways, but to achieve those
insights she had to recognize and resolve problems that can be attributed to the
stringent demands of the perspective she chose.
The method she used to conduct her study, participant observation, involves
observation of those studied by directly participating in their actions with them.
Participant observation seems to be most readily undertaken when the
sociological observer can blend in with those being studied, engaging in actions
with them in such a way that the sociologists presence as other is not intrusive.
As Mandell clearly demonstrates, an adult engaging in participant observation
of children, especially of young children, is open to questioning both by
children and by other adults. A first response to her choice of method might
well be: Thats impossible. An adult cannot pass for a child. Indeed that may
be the case, but one can, as Mandell demonstrates, be accepted by children as
part of their ongoing activities in many of the ways that children would accept
another child. (A similar issue arose for Elliot Liebow (1967), a white
sociologist studying black streetcorner men. Liebow did not pass for black, but
he was sufficiently accepted by the men to study their actions by participating
with them.)
It should be noted that Mandell is describing processes involved in studying
children, not necessarily in working with or teaching them. The understanding
that she provides is clearly of use to those working with children but the
strategy she uses of least-adult is a researchers role; its use as a teachers role is
both questionable and undocumented.
From Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 16 No. 4, January 1988 pp. 433
467, copyright 1988 by Sage Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Sage
Publications, Inc. and the author.
39
The Least-Adult Role in Studying Children
The difficulty of the task Mandell set herself of studying children through
participant observation, the insights necessary both to recognize and to
undertake such a task, and the resulting accommodations she made to the
exigencies of the research situation all emerge clearly in this article. In addition
to the ample data she provides in this chapter, examples of the results of her
approach can be found in Part III, Chapter 12, of this book.
F.C.W.
Few qualitative studies of childrens social worlds exist. Yet all of those works
agree that the central methodological problem facing an adult participant
observer of children concerns the membership role (Adler and Adler, 1987b)
adopted by the researcher. Some (Coenen, 1986; Damon, 1977) argue that the
worlds of adults and children are so socially, intellectually, and culturally
distinct that adults can only assume a detached oberver role. Others (Fine,
1987; Corsaro, 1985) suggest that age and authority separate children from
adults, preventing the researcher from taking on a complete participant role.
Instead the researcher assumes a friendly, nonauthoritative, marginal role. Still
others (Waksler, 1986; Goode, 1986 [both of which articles appear in this
volume]) insist that all aspects of adult superiority except physical differences
can be cast aside, allowing the researcher entree to the childrens world as an
active, fully participating member.
All three of these rolesa detached observer role, a marginal semi-
participatory role, and a complete involvement roleare based on certain
epistemological assumptions about adults and children as social members.
After exploring these assumptions in the rest of this article, I will discuss the
completely involved membership role, one I label the least-adult role.
Research Roles with Children
Researchers advocating the detached observer role argue that our hierarchical
structure of age roles and adult ethnocentrism preclude a complete participant
role (Fine, 1987). Children are conceptualized as socially incompetent,
intellectually immature, and culturally ignorant. Relative to adult researchers,
who view themselves as developmentally complete, children are viewed as
striving to achieve adult representations of behavior. According to this
perspective,
1
the worlds of children and adults are so separate, so dichotomous,
that adults can only research children from an objective, impersonal stance. The
majority of deterministic studies of children, particularly those in psychology,
subscribe to this view.
In contrast, advocates of the semiparticipatory role focus on the
similarities, rather than the differences, between adults and children. Fine
and Glassner (1979) and Fine (1987) suggest four possible roles, including
supervisor, leader, observer, and friend. While they advocate the friend role,
all four types recognize some dimension of age and authority as separating
40
children from adults. These researchers suggest what while adults were
physically unable to pass unnoticed in the society of children (Fine,
1987:222), they can take on a nonauthoritative, helpful role of adult-as-
friend. The goal of this membership adoption is not to achieve an equal-
peer status with children since researchers agree that according to age,
cognitive development and physical maturity, adults are superior to
children. Rather, the goal is to minimize these differences by assuming the
less-threatening role of non-interfering companion.
The third membership role, that of an involved participant observer, assumes
that adult-child differences are more ideological than previously acknowledged.
The active involvement of the researcher in the daily lives of children is accepted
as a tenable possibility. While acknowledging adult-child differences, the
researcher suspends all adult-like characteristics except physical size. By
suspending the ontological terms of child and adult and by participating in
the childrens social world as a child, the central methodological problem rests
on essentially a technical question of the extent to which physical superiority
prevents adults researchers from participating in the role of child.
The Least-Adult Role
In this article I advocate the third, complete involvement, research role, that of
least-adult, in studying young children. I argue that even physical differences
can be so minimized when participating with children as to be inconsequential
in interaction. In particular, three methodological principles that arise from
George Herbert Meads (1938) philosopy of action guide my conceptualization
of this membership position and help abolish adult-child differences.
In the first instance, Meadian field workers accept their research subjects as
they come to them. Status differentials generated by age, race, class, and gender
are endemic in adult-adult studies. Chicago field workers (Becker et al., 1961;
Geer, 1967; Strauss, 1978; R.Wax, 1979) have developed a long tradition of
strategies and techniques for minimizing social distance. In adultchild studies,
once the assumption of adult superiority based on age and cognitive maturity is
cast aside, researchers can build on these previously tested techniques and use
them to gain entry into the childs world. For example, strategies for dealing
with issues of informed consent, rapport, confidentiality, and adult supervision
are applicable in studies of young children.
Second, having decided to apply adult-adult research strategies to
adultchild studies, researchers are forced to suspend their judgments on
childrens immaturities and focus on how children fit together lines of
action. As Waksler (1987 [Chapter 8 in this volume]) has noted, suspending
the notion of children and viewing them simply as social members allows us
to reveal how much children must know in order to act like children.
Gaming knowledge of childrens views and of the ways in which children
accept and challenge adult perspectives means taking young children
seriously (Joffe, 1973). Yet to take childrens ideas, beliefs, activities and
experiences seriously as real, and as embodying knowledge, is to risk being
taken for a fool (Waksler, 1986:71). Adult and professional sociological
41
notions of children as contaminated data sources seriously constrain adult
researchers who question these assumptions.
Third, in order to gain entry into the childrens world adult researchers
must engage in joint action with the children, thus creating mutual
understanding. One of Meads (1938) absorbing philosophical questions, the
origin and meaning of joint action, is exemplified in the context of adults and
children exchanging meaning. According to Mead meaning, or mutual
understanding, is a social product, a joint creation that emerges in and
through the defining interactions of selves (adult researchers) and others
(children) around social objects. Mead was perplexed about the process by
which people, from quite different perspectives, created or exchanged
meaning with others. In short, Mead asked if perspectives, peoples ordinary
way of thinking, feeling, and acting in situations (Becker et al., 1961), so
separate and distinguish groups of people, how can different groups ever
accomplish any joint actions?*
Meads answer has profound methodological implications for adult
researchers studying children. Mead suggest that while perspectives may
separate people, shared objects specifically unite.
2
People with quite different
perspectives on an object can act together and in the same way with the object
thus reaching immediate, shared understandings. As I discuss later, sand for the
children and sand for me constituted quite different social objects. Since
perspectives are relative in time and space, children are unlikely to share an
adult researchers larger perspective of sand, for example. Yet, by seeing and
acting on childrens social objects as they themselves do, adults and children
can coordinate their acts and reach enough meaning, sufficiently understood, to
facilitate joint action. The Meadian premise that people act on the basis of the
meaning of their objects suggest that achieving a close involvement with the
children on shared social objects is the basis on which adult researchers fit into
the childrens world.
Methods and Sources of Data
My data are drawn from participant observations with preschool children in
two day-care center playgrounds, classrooms, hallways, bathrooms, and
lunchrooms. Between 1976 and 1978 I conducted observations for a period of
fifteen months at a private, parent-cooperative day-care center in Boston,
Massachusetts. During 197879 I conducted field work in Hamilton, Ontario
for ten months in a day-care center that was publicly sponsored by an
established Canadian non-profit organization.
Both centers had about sixty children of mixed sexes and races between the
ages of 2 and 5. My observations focused on the 24 year olds in both sites.
Throughout my field work I tried to observe children in situations where they
actively participated in building social exchanges with others. This meant that
* The issue discussed in this paragraph is what Mackay in Chapter 3 referred to as
intersubjectivity. (Waksler)
42
most of my experiences and observations as least-adult focused on peer
episodes in which children were less likely to be under adult supervision and
direction. When children participated in highly adult structured
environments, including circle time, nap time, lunchtime, and teacherdirected
activity time, I often remained detached from these episodes, merely
observing. However, during semi-child-structured and entirely child-
structured activities I engaged actively with the children as least-adult. These
episodes occurred during free play periods indoors and outdoors, in sand-
boxes, climbing areas, home centers, building block areas, gymnastic centers,
and grassy areas. Low-structure areas are ones in which tasks are
undifferentiated, and thus peers engage in the process of creating structure:
constructing rules, routines, and ritualistic interactional procedures (Mandell,
1986). Within these semistructured and free play settings, I assumed an active
observational role, following the children as they pursued their interests,
doing whatever they were doing, and, when invited, interacting with them as
an older playmate might.
My role as least-adult included undertaking a responsive, interactive, fully
involved participant observer role with the children in as least an adult manner
as possible. This entailed neither directing nor correcting childrens actions.
While my size dictated that I could never physically pass for a child, I
endeavored to put aside ordinary forms of adult status and interaction
authority, verbal competency, cognitive and social masteryin order to follow
their ways closely.
Since I initially had little understanding of childrens interactional entry
patterns, I assumed the role of learner, and allowed the children to teach me
their ways. As a neophyte, I either attached myself to small groups of children
or I placed myself strategically in activity areas. In both instances I stayed close
physically, watched carefully, said very little, and closely followed their
behavior. Once admitted to their social exchanges, I interacted freely with the
children, making full use of the physical space and equipment provided by the
centers. As a member of the childrens social world, I both observed and
participated in rule stretching and breaking.
Corsaros (1981) recommendation of the peripheral role as a way to enter
the childs world is close to my conceptualization of the least-adult role
enactment in its early stage. Corsaro cast himself in the role of eager
participant, someone who tried to become part of the activities without
affecting the nature or flow of peer episodes. He followed his own guidelines: he
never attempted to 1) initiate or terminate an episode, 2) repair disrupted
activities, 3) settle disputes, or 4) coordinate or direct activity. As a peripheral
participant, Corsaro placed myself in the ecological area, moved when
necessary, responded when addressed and occasionally offered contributions
when appropriate (1981:133).
Unlike Corsaro, however, over time I became an active participant, not
merely a peripheral, passive, or reactive observer. This means I closely followed
childrens ways, initially observing and imitating their words, actions, and
responses, and gradually fitting my line of action into theirs. As an active
participant I committed many mistakes by acting in nonchildlike ways that the
children either did not comprehend or mistook for adult responses. These
interactional errors, or what Mead (1938) has called perspectival problems,
43
disrupted my engagement with the children and forced me to forge new lines of
action more appropriate to the children.
This ongoing trial-and-error interaction with the children characterized my
early enactment of the least-adult role. Yet encountering problematic social
objects and being forced to accept the childrens definition of action in order to
participate had positive results. In the first place, learning to become least-adult
helped diminish my adult status with the children and render negligible the
effect of my physical size. Second, in the process of actively role-taking with the
children, I came to grasp their meaningful social objects. Since many young
children cannot articulate clearly and many others cannot act with adults in an
adult perspective on objects, it is pointless to ask young children what it is like
to be a child and what is important to them. It is only by engaging them in
action that these questions are answered.
As an adult attempting to pass as a child, my gender, age, and experience
may well have affected my ability to take on this role. As a mother of young
children, I was accustomed to playing with, directing, and chasing 2-year-olds.
Moving from the role of adult supervisor to least-adult companion represented
a small step along a continuum of adult-child participatory roles. I found it easy
to understand and contribute to childrens building of social exchanges, since
the skill and complexity of childrens negotiations had long been my private
fascination. It may well be that adults less engrossed in child raising might well
have found the movement from director to peer more significant.
Dilemmas of Being Least-Adult
In my ideal conception of the role of least-adult, conceived previous to site
entry, I imagined that I would play with the children and merely observe the
teachers at work. I had loosely decided to follow a few guidelines with both the
teachers and the children, namely that I would say very little on the site, proffer
little personal information, and engage in much informational questioning of
all activities and participants. During the course of field work I not only
violated every guideline, but also I quickly discovered that the childrens
interactional patterns were more complex than I had imagined. By committing
mistakes and allowing the children to correct me, I came to see their
interactional rules. Having been a child, I assumed I knew how children
behaved. Yet when forced to construct joint acts with them, I realized the extent
to which I had underestimated the skill and negotiation required of children to
assemble intricate interaction.
My early interactions with the children represented an elaborate process of
guesswork. Throughout this trial-and-error stage, the field workers major
challenge is to adopt techniques for repairing social exchanges while
simultaneously analyzing interactional errors.
Who Are You?
So often it is assumed that if supervisors of children admit adult researchers
into sites to observe children, then gatekeeping problems are resolved. This
44
misconception stems from adult assumptions that children themselves are
not a gatekeeping group, and that the usual unobtrusive role of adult
researchers does not necessitate research bargaining with children. The
least-adult role demands entry into childrens perspectives, and thus
necessitates negotiating an acceptable participant-observer role with
children. As in any research bargain, the children wanted to know what I
was doing on their turf and what they stood to gain by cooperating with
me (Wax, 1971).
As other researchers of children have indicated (Fine and Glassner 1979;
Corsaro, 1981), actions are the central ways in which the children learn the
researchers intentions. I wanted to indicate to the children that I did not want
to be treated as a directive or judgmental adult or worse, a teacher. Repeatedly,
in both centers, the children asked Who are you? meaning not what is your
name, but what is your role.

10/10/78N Sam asks me, Will you read my book now? I replied, Im not
a teacher. Youll have to ask Sarah, shes a teacher. Sam replied, Who are
you? I answered I just come here to watch and play with you.

The least-adult role demanded that I demonstrate to children the boundaries of
my role. Since I did not want to be treated as a teacher, I had to show children
that I could not be called on to perform adult tasks such as tying shoes, pushing
them on the swings, holding them in my lap, or changing diapers. Childrens
requests for these types of activities I rebuffed by stating, Im not a teacher.
Youll have to ask a teacher to do that. As I discovered, in the beginning, the
children protested my refusals.

13/10/77E Mac, David, and Daniel were lifting plastic and metal
boxes up. Mac was giving the orders to lift the cartons. The others
were complying and talking about it. Mac says to me, Nancy can you
lift these up? I replied, They are heavy. Mac said, You can lift them
up, youre a teacher. I responded, No, Im not a teacher. Mac says
nothing but looks puzzled. I go on I just watch here, Im not a
teacher. Teachers come here every day, and I dont. Mac listens
carefully and then asks, Well, can you lift these up? I respond sure
and hand him the boxes.

The main reason children have difficulty in accepting an adult as non-directive
stems from their lack of experience of adults as participatory, enjoyable, and
nonjudgmental. Adult observers of children rarely enter childrens space and
time. Adults, for example, are almost never found in childrens activity areas,
including sandboxes, swings, climbers, or play-houses, For the most part,
adults, in the role of parents and teachers, watch, stand over, and peer down at
children (Corsaro, 1981). When adult-child contact occurs, it is usually in age-
and status-appropriate situations. Teachers, for example, direct and monitor
childrens play, help in times of trouble, and tell children what they can and
cannot do (Corsaro, 1981). Since being least-adult is such an unusual role for
adults to perform, the role requires behavioral demonstration in order to reveal
its character.
45
Having reiterated that I was not a teacher, this left the children and me in this
curious scenario of uncovering just who I was. Just as my adult ideological
conceptions had not anticipated the childrens ability to discern the situational
demands on my role and hence evolve their own criterion of acceptable least-
adult behavior, I was also unprepared for the degree of role negotiation in
which the children were prepared to engage. Until I demonstrated what I had to
offer the children in exchange for being accepted into peer exchanges, I
constituted one more uninteresting adult observer.
I took to demonstrating to the children, and to the suspiciously watchful
teachers, just who I was by swinging on their swings, following them into the
sandbox, or hiding with them underneath the porch and in the concrete pipes.
At first the children giggled hilariously and the teachers folio wed me and
stared, as if they knew that adults didnt do things unless they were being
silly, out of role. A typical childs response is indicated by the following
comment.

28/4/77E I went outside and swung on the rubber tires. Some of the older
children came up to swing with me. The others who were watching
giggled as if they knew adults didnt do those things.

By perching on the edge of a sandbox, swinging beside children, or sitting on
the climbers, I was invading the childrens territory. This seemed different from
childrens regular experience of adults within those centers, but within the
realm of normal adult behavior. But by making myself continually available to
the children for interaction (Cook-Gumperz and Corsaro, 1977) and by
actually participating in the childrens activities in childlike ways, I clearly
distinguished myself from marginal or reactive observers. Childrens initial
responses to being taken as serious and worthy playmates were ones of joy and
incredulity.
Identification with Adults
Not only did the children find my research role unusual, but the teachers
were also suspicious. They wanted to know what I was really doing with
the children. Was I in fact responsible enough and morally correct enough
to be left alone with their charges? Did I exhibit evidence that I knew how
to get along with children? What sorts of things was I saying to them while
I sat in the sandbox and swung on their swings? In the early days, the
teachers followed me as often as the children did. If I wandered out of
vision, the teachers would casually stroll over to where I was, listen with an
indifferent stance, smile their approval and leave. No doubt my involvement
with the children appeared ridiculous to the teachers, as evidenced by their
arched eyebrows, quizzical glances, and teasing comments such as enjoying
the sand today? and Nancy, what is it youre trying to do with the
children?
Initially I was uncomfortable and embarrassed, since I wanted to be taken
seriously as a researcher. Yet, the teachers initial reactions are data on adult
conceptions of childhood interaction as being immature, sometimes cute, but
not worthy of this kind of constant attention.
46
My research role as least-adult is not as rigidly prescribed as some
methodological accounts suggest (Gold, 1969). Rather, I experienced this role
as one spontaneously invented and constructed by the combined efforts of my
respondents and myself (Wax, 1971). For example, as the children grew to trust
me, my involvement with them during their free play periods increased and so
alleviated the teachers from some of their supervisory burdens. My relationship
with the teachers thus evolved into an agreeable compromise as we continually
reshaped the research bargain.
In bargaining initially with the teachers as gatekeepers, I presented my
observer role as an attempt to be an unobtrusive visitor who observes and
plays with the children. I was never directly asked what contribution I
would make to the center in exchange for being allowed access. Nor did I
raise the reciprocity issue. However, it was clear from the beginning that the
teachers saw me as fulfilling a range of possible adult relationships
including confidante, friend, and helper. In particular, teachers wanted an
extra pair of hands to change diapers, wipe noses, tie shoes, and comfort
the distressed. Even though my initial bargaining with the gatekeeping
supervisors had left my role open, the teachers assumed they would derive
concrete benefits from my presence.
The role of least-adult thus placed me in the tenuous and unexpected
position of middle manager. Each group, teachers and children, had cerain
requests with which they considered I had to comply in order to allow me
continued access. These requests were, I felt, contradictory. Acquiescing to the
teachers demands compromised my role as a nonauthoritarian visitor. Over
identification with the children left the teachers feeling exploited.
Teachers viewed my presence as beneficial only as long as I was willing
to help out. As the days wore on it became obvious in both centers that
hectic was the norm. Teachers were often short staffed and fragmented by
multiple demands. Having an extra person to assume the menial and non-
skilled jobs of cleaning up and changing diapers freed teachers to
complete the more skilled tasks of instructing, nurturing, and monitoring.
Only in exceptional circumstances was I called on to assume a more
senior teachers role. During these situations it was untenable to
maintain a neutral observer role. In the following extreme example, a
supply teacher found her circle time overwhelming and begged me to
intervene.

28/4/77 Margarets (a supply teacher) meeting time had disintegrated into
chaos. The eight children are all bouncing, running, and throwing
themselves down on the floor. Having abandoned her attempts to read
them a story since the children were not listening, Margaret puts a record
on and announces Now, its movement time. The children, already
moving, pay no attention, the shouts and squeals of delight are getting
louder. Margaret turns to me and begs me to do something. Up until then,
I had been passively sitting on the floor watching.

While this proved to be an extreme example, there were numerous
incidents, especially in the early days, when my assistance enabled the
teachers to respond to multiple demands. In Boston, my first research site, I
47
interpreted any teacher requests on my time as threatening my least-adult
status with the children. I was afraid that the children would never learn to
stop making adult requests if I complied with the teachers requests and
helped them out. Once I learned that my presence during the dirty-work
times would prompt requests for help, I learned to avoid those scenes. In
retrospect, this fear of personal disclosure was based on a traditional, non-
reciprocal image of the researcher-subject relationship as being somehow
inviolable and contaminated by subjectivity unless distance was maintained.
In the second research site in Hamilton, Ontario, having had some
experience, I was more open to assisting the teachers, having learned that
the children and the teachers would eventually accept the situationally
variable dimensions of my role.
During child-structured periods (free play) the children learned that I was
accessible and open to participation. During the teacher-structured periods
(circle time, nap time, eating time, dressing time), I could be approached to tie
shoes, wipe noses, or comfort a beleaguered child. In fact, by not approaching
the child with comforting or nurturing tasks and by responding
unenthusiastically on the few occasions when I was approached, the children
rarely solicited my adult-like behavior. It may be that their dominant
impression of me was of someone who played with them. Nurturing and
restitution of arguments was better left to those who rarely engaged with them
in this manner, namely the teachers.
The teachers also developed a multifaceted view of my role. During free
play periods, they learned that I could be found in one of the various
childrens sites (the sandbox, doll center, paint table) engaged with the
children in conversation or play. During circle or music time, I sat on the
floor with the children and responded with the appropriate gestures or
songs when the other children were queried. However, during field trips,
walks outdoors, lunch time, nap time, or going-home time, I was a
responsible adult presence who could be relied on to dress, feed, bathroom,
or comfort a child. In Boston I simply tried to avoid adult scenes. In
Hamilton I rarely offered to help but neither refused when asked nor
avoided these situations. The research relationship is reciprocal, and
offering help and disclosing personal feelings and experiences as a mother,
worker, and student did not compromise my least-adult role with the
children, nor did it bias my relationship with the teachers. In fact, it
established that I was an okay person with everyday concerns.
Following Childrens Ways
The early stage of least-adult enactment was difficult, since I experienced
methodological problems in following childrens ways. In particular, the
childrens patterns of movement and their language presented obstacles.
These dilemmas were masked in the first few days by my preoccupation
with grasping the basic elements of the social order (Geer, 1967). I
concentrated on general observation of the situation, including such
introductory tasks as getting names, describing setting and dress, and
grasping the calendar of daily events. The field worker assumes the stance
48
of a detached outsider, sitting on the fringes, mentally recording as many
patterns of activity as possible. While this scanning phase allows the
observer to plan appropriate entry and sampling procedures (Corsaro,
1981), this phase is exhausting. After my first day of observing in Boston, I
noted in my observers comments
3
that,

21/4/77E O.C. I was struck by how difficult it is to observe everything,
how tiring it is, how hard it is to assume the observers role with both the
children and the teachers. Seems very confusing dont feel at ease in the
situation and the others feel tense with me. Will need to spend the next
few sessions sorting out the action.

The novelty of the situation, the trying on of a comfortable research role, and
the difficulty of becoming familiar with the children were compounded with the
issues of following the children.
I quickly discovered that the pattern of children was one of scatter. To me,
this constituted chaos. My adult conception of an orderly entry and passage
from one activity to the next was of no use in guiding or ordering my attention.
The following comment from my second day illustrates my difficulty in
grasping this pattern of roaming,

28/4/77E It is too difficult to keep track of what happened to whom
because the group disintegrated. The children flit from one activity to
another so quickly that it is difficult and confusing to find a pattern.

This limiting strategy provided me with time to focus on a few children, discern
their entry and exit patterns and concentrate on understanding their verbal and
nonverbal language.
Understanding Childrens Language
Not only following the children but also grasping their language proved
difficult. Many of the 2- and 3-year-olds did not enunciate in a clear, adult-
like fashion. Frequently I asked the children to repeat themselves. While this
is a common adult communication technique, it is a completely
inappropriate least-adult access tactic. Adult clarification requests (What
did you say? Pardon, Say that again) communicate adult ignorance and
impatience and disturb the flow of interaction sufficiently to end
encounters.
After repeated failures, I adopted the least-adult technique of relying less
on precise verbal explications and concentrating more on nonverbal cues.
Verbal and nonverbal gestures are linked in childrens communication,
creating a language of their own. Babbling, or not speaking English as
adults understand the language (deVilliers and deVilliers, 1977), is central to
childrens own language. Unintelligible noise is both part of childrens
involvement with each other and a device to exclude adults from their play.
Children often do not understand others precise meanings. They require
less detail and specification to create acts. Yet, when pressed to present an
49
intelligible-to-adults explanation of their behavior, children construct
acceptable accounts. In this early example, I demonstrate the inadequacy of
an adult participant role with children.

21/11/78N Brock has been watching my interactions with Amy in the
doll center. He has been hanging over the front end of the stove and
follows us to the table. Brock starts to look at me and talk and I cant
understand. I ask, Say it again. Pardon? Pardon Brock. Finally in
exasperation I look at Jenny, who has been standing and watching,
and I ask What is he saying? Jenny says something I dont
understand and turns to Brock and says it questioningly, Brock
gestures towards the box with dolls. I ask, Jenny, what does he
want? Jenny replies Ill look. She starts pulling items out of the box
until she holds up a small, wooden blue block, hands it to Brock and
says This? Brock shakes his head, Jenny throws it back, takes out a
Big Jim doll and hands it to him saying Here it is. Brock takes it
without expression and moves on.

Children demonstrate Meads (1938) adage that shared meanings, perhaps only
roughly understood, are sufficient grounds on which to build public
involvements.
Screening Out Noise
Another aspect of learning childrens language involves screening out
extraneous noise and concentrating on immediate activities. As a newcomer I
found both centers noisy, confusing, tiring, and incomprehensible. Upon my
return to one center after a two-week Christmas break, I was sharply reminded
of how loud and chaotic childrens behavior appears:

9/1/78N I had been absent for so longtwo weeksthat the morning
seemed very confusing and noisy to me. Had difficulty seeing patterns
of behavior. They looked like a bunch of screaming, unhappy children
who couldnt get along with one another. What is interesting about
this feeling, particularly given the amount of time I have spent there, is
that this must be the impression of any new-comer to this center, so in
fact, anyone who didnt spend a considerable length of time getting to
know the patterns of activity would no doubt come out with an
entirely different view of the children from what I have.

As least-adult, I had, like the children, to become accustomed once again to the
daily noise level.
Intense involvement in action becomes the means for filtering out
irrelevant sound. One of the skills children acquire is distinguishing adult
sound from immediate action sound. As members of a larger social group,
children learn to expect and listen for teacher announcements interrupting
their ongoing activities. It was not until I violated this implicit rule that I
became aware of childrens ability to monitor and anticipate adult
50
intrusions. Once, on an elaborate pretend fishing trip with four children, I
became so immersed in my noninterfering least-adult role that I calmly
watched one boy cut open another boys head with the shovel, ignoring an
observing teachers warnings to intervene and avert the blow. The teacher
classified my inattention as negligence. Yet, interestingly, despite her
astonishment, she accepted my apologies and seemed considerably warmed
to me. Perhaps my error made visible the serious responsibilities of
caretakers and validated the nonparticipatory supervisory role of teachers.
In contrast, the participating children seemed neither surprised nor upset by
my lack of interference.
Role Testing
Both the children and the teachers subjected me to a number of tests of my
commitment to the role of least-adult. My neutral stance was tested by the
childrens violation of center rules in my presence. I witnessed children
hiding in forbidden areas, urinating outside, laughing when asked to be
quiet, nor responding to teacher requests, and taking teacher-designated
materials.
I also encountered many incidents of rule stretching (Strauss, 1978).
Children routinely violated the adult norm of sharing by struggling over
involvement objects. They shattered the norm of discursive arbitration by
resolving disputes with screaming and shouting. Children strained the norm
of rationality with their boisterous aggression. These violations were so
frequent that adults customarily intervened only when children demanded
arbitration.
In both the explicit and negotiable transgressions I declined to judge. In
order to avoid confrontations with the teachers, I usually left an explicit rule-
breaking and rule-stretching scene.
For example, in one center urinating in the yard was a forbidden but regular
event for a small group of children. The teachers never caught any children in
the act, and I avoided being implicated for irresponsibility.

22/6/77E Outside in the yard, Nicole comes running up to me and says I
can go pee-pee outside you know. Do you want me to do it? I shrug my
shoulders (and look around to see where the teachers are!) Nicole runs
under the porch, pulls down her pants and urinates. Daniel, David,
Saskia, Jenny, and Amber are watching. Jenny pulls her pants down and
urinates. Then Saskia and David do the same. I leave, since I feel I could
not account for this. Amber then runs and tells the teacher about the
incident.

Rule-stretching scenes were more likely to result in teacher intervention. In this
typical case, for example, the child Kyle was unable to stop the violator,
Crystal. Since he was committed to his act, it was imperative that she be
stopped. Hence his demands for immediate restitution.

51
14/11/78N Crystal is dressed up in black shoes and is carrying a purse.
She wanders into the lunchroom, drops her purse and puts on a plastic
apron for painting. She starts to paint all over Kyles painting and on the
actual paint board. Kyle turns to me and says, Shes painting my picture.
I shrugged and replied Tell Pam (the teacher) if you want her to stop. I
cant stop her. Im not a teacher. Kyle repeated his request. I repeated my
reply. Finally he went and got Pam.

While it took time, the children eventually used me as a nonauthoritarian
participant. In cases in which I did not leave a rule-stretching scene before the
childrens cries demanded teacher intervention, the teachers were almost
always annoyed with my neutral stance. Since I was present, the teachers
requested my judgment in assigning blame. I avoided collusion with the
teachers by responding that I had not witnessed or could not assess the
exchange.
Field work accounts with older children (Fine, 1987; Fine and Glassner,
1979; Thorne, 1986) report similar incidents of stealing, lying, and cheating
with outsiders. Clearly my rule-breaking encounters did not approximate
the illegality of many adolescent pranks. Yet witnessing infractions of any
type represents a form of role testing. The host community judges
researchers by their complicity, and all researchers acknowledge the
personal tension generated by their silent acceptance.
This tension is perhaps exacerbated in studies of young children who, by
virtue of their immaturity, are constantly monitored. Physically and culturally,
children have little privacy and secrecy. A least-adult researcher actively
involved with children is similarly publicly scrutinized. The researcher must be
sensitive to the teachers dual and contradictory perspectives on the researcher
as peer and least-adult.
Rapport
Trust or rapport is often touted as a solution to the problems of reactivity
(Emerson, 1981:365). Adult researchers of children (Corsaro, 1981; Fine,
1987; Fine and Glassner, 1979) have assumed that rapport with their
subjects provides access to information hidden from outsiders. The
similarity of my data with that of others (Corsaro, 1979a, 1979b, and
1981) suggests that this is the case. Yet rapport also leads to unexpected
demands.
With the teachers, as mentioned earlier, I exchanged my help with the
dirty work and playing with the children for continued access. Similarly, the
children allowed me to join in their action in exchange for correctly
following their ways. With both groups, being trusted meant that I was no
longer seen as a threat but as someone they wanted to include in all their
activities.
With the teachers, indications of acceptance took the form of routinely
setting me a place for lunch, opening friendly conversations, and quizzing
me on my absences. Where were you? or You should have been
52
hereyesterday became familiar preludes to accounts of missed activities.
They wanted me to see everything. Although the teachers trusted me as
someone who could be left with the children, I obtained only situated
access. My status as a temporary teachers aide, in their eyes, excluded me
from many of the routinized disagreements they engaged in with one
another. In Boston, during interviews and through overhearing
conversations openly carried out in my presence, I heard accounts of
intrastaff and staff-parent conflicts. In fact, most of the toddler staff were
in open disagreement with each other within and between the morning
and afternoon programs. In Hamilton the center was chronically
underfunded and as a result, short staffed. Because of insufficient financial
support from their parent corporation the center eventually closed. The
uncertainty generated job anxiety and intrastaff competition and merit
ranking. Since I was primarily interested in adult-children and peer
interaction, I noticed these events to the extent that they affected
programming.
With the children, the clearest indication of my acceptance was their
immediate inclusion of me in their involvements and their concurrent refusal
to use me as a substitute nurturer or disciplinarian. The adult ideological
bias underestimates the extent to which children contextualize adult
behavior. This entails more than simply forming personality preferences for
certain teachers. It suggests that the hosts, the children, judged me by
patient observation and by learning how I could be helpful (Wax,
1980:275). By the focusing stage when I had acquired their access strategies
my arrival in a group of children elicited only mild indifference.
Other acts both tested and provided validity of my understanding of the
childrens ways (Bruyn, 1966:180185). The childrens acceptance of my
least-adult role was made all the more evident in Hamilton when, after six
weeks of observation, I arrived one day armed, for the first time, with
paper and pencil. I concentrated on recording action passively. My refusal
to participate prompted a barrage of inquiries as to who I was.
4
In the
following example, Mark continued to use me as a participant as he had
come to expect me to behave in spite of my attempts to record:

14/11/78N I walked into the little room with paper and pencil and Mark
came running up immediately saying, Youre the bad pirate. Come with
me. He threw beads at me. I followed him to the corner where he covered
me with a blanket and told me to be quiet. I was still carrying my paper
and pencil and feeling rather foolish.

I had firmly established with the children that I would learn their ways in situ.
When I temporarily abandoned this approach, they were confused. After an
hour of rebuffing access attempts and trying to sample systematically, I
relinquished the paper.
Categorical acceptance (Denzin 1970b:192) by the children created un-
anticipated dilemmas. As a visitor who followed and focused, I was
expected by the children to be everywhere with them. But this presented
problems. I could not physically do what they did, such as perch on the top
of a climber, rock in the wooden boat, or chase them on their riding toys.
53
The children apparently forgot about my size limitations and were annoyed
when I didnt come when called.
The other dilemma centered around the escalating demands on my time.
5
Once I had mastered the access strategies, my role as a participant became
both more prescribed and limitless. It was limitless in that being able to
enter situations quickly, the children and I could then negotiate lengthy and
more complex encounters than I had been able to accomplish in the early
days. The role also became more prescribed in that, as an integrated least-
adult, the children became intolerant of my interactional mistakes and less
willing to allow me reflection time in the form of self-involvement. In
retrospect, having achieved this degree of acceptance, this would have been
the opportune period to withdraw and videotape sampled incidents.
Learning Childrens Access Rituals
Becoming least-adult with the children is a gradual role-enactment process
that occurs in two ways: naturally, in the course of interaction and
reflectively, as a result of encountering problematic situations.
Unproblematic interaction, or what Mead (1938) called habitual action,
refers to interchanges in which self-other dialogue flows spontaneously.
Enough meaning is sufficiently understood and exchanged for acts to
continue unabated. Much of my later experience with the children fell into
this category. We engaged in elaborate fantasy enactments and remained
self-absorbed alongside others for lengthy periods (Mandell, 1984 [Chapter
12 in this volume]). However, my earliest attempts to engage in action were
problematic, demonstrating my ignorance of their interactional rules. In the
rest of this article I will concentrate on elucidating common access strategies
children use. My eventual mastery of these techniques enabled my further
integration into the childrens world.
Goffman (1971) considers access rituals to consist of common greetings and
farewells employed by adults to mark the beginning and end of most
interactions. Childrens access strategies refer to frequent techniques children
use to open peer exchanges. Children must understand and master these
behaviors in order to produce joint acts. Access rituals thus provide a structure
for the acquisition and maintenance of peer interaction (Corsaro, 1979). They
represent the patterned ways in which children enter into interactional
dialogue.
In the Philosophy of the Act, Mead (1938) reveals three stages through
which all interactions proceed. In the selection stage, self-others choose social
objects with which to become involved. For example, children typically select
the involvement of others with toys, puzzles, or painting as their object of
attention (focus). In the second stage, children jointly manipulate their
involvement objects. They physically or mentally do something with the object.
Pictures are painted, blocks are piled high, or firemen-children put out pretend
fires. The third stage is labelled evaluation or consummation. Here children
bring their acts to completion, finishing art work, terminating fantasy
productions, or putting away their toys.
54
Peer interactions begin with the childrens selection of objects and end with
their evaluation. Interactional episodes vary widely in terms of duration,
content, and the degree to which shared meaning is achieved. To some extent,
these variables are correlated with the type of access-ritual employed. Yet,
common to all peer episodes is their initial structuring through the childrens
employment of access behavior. Engagement with children reveals four
common access strategies: monitoring, action reproduction, object involvement
openers, and supplications. In the course of uncovering and mastering these
techniques, problems of following childrens activity patterns, absorbing
childrens noise levels, and comprehending their language and gestures were
encountered.
Monitoring
Children cannot engage in peer interaction unless they learn how to join groups
on their own. Successful interactants, including both neophytes and
experienced children, are those who interpretively observe the behavior of
others before they attempt to join in. This monitoring takes two forms: staring,
by strategically placing oneself in a position to scan the behavior of others, and
physically following others around while cautiously maintaining social
distance.
Monitoring is a common access ritual which enables children to remain
peripheral to the acts of others and to absorb information on how others build
social exchanges. Children unobtrusively observe others manipulation of social
objects, neither contributing to nor disrupting their involvement, as is evident in
this example:

14/6/77E Ana, Marissa and Candice were in the sandbox, each holding a
container and a shovel. Ana was singing to herself. They were all putting
sand in the containers, walking to the climber and dumping it out. Josh
arrives with a small wheelbarrow and runs it into the box. The children
start putting their containers into the wheelbarrow. The extent of the
conversation was Josh saying Fill it up. Fill it up.

Here the children monitored and then joined by doing what the others were
doing. Throughout the exchanges, gestures prevailed.
Other researchers have noted that monitoring represents one of the
central ways children come to understand others situational use of objects.
Garvey and Berndt (1975) regard procedural or preparatory behaviors as
necessary for setting the stage for childrens communication of pretend play.
Corsaro (1979), in his study of nursery school behavior, concluded that over
80 per cent of childrens access attempts involved the strategy of nonverbal
entry. In both my settings, monitoring was a technique employed over 90
per cent of the time in which successful entry into sustained peer
involvement was obtained.
Once familiar with others patterns, interpretive observation takes place
almost instantaneously. With a glance, children could assess the action and
55
judge correct entry patterns. The more exaggerated staring and following noted
above were indicative of newcomers.
As a newcomer to the day care scene, I too invoked the monitoring strategy
to discern patterns in childrens movements. The tenuous and fragile nature of
peer episodes gave them a hasty, chaotic feeling. Not only did access and
withdrawal patterns seem random, but the accelerated pace of childrens
movements contributed to the impression of chaos. The fieldwork technique of
focusing my observations on a few children enabled me to grasp access
behaviors. Interpretive observation aided my discernment, and it emerged as
the childs primary access technique.
The conceptual opposite of monitoring was the act of crowding. Defined as
invasion of interactional space, crowding included pushing or shoving into
physical proximity with other children who were engaged in action, stealing
their interactional props, and verbal (You fucky, You asshole) or physical
(punching, kicking, slapping) abuse. Unlike monitoring, which preceded
successful building of peer interactions, crowding was an access ritual which
inevitably destroyed peer exchanges.
Action Reproduction
One of the childrens most acceptable access strategies was to physically
place themselves near other children and do what the others were doing.
Monitoring was a precursor of action reproduction. Repeatedly a typical
pattern emerged. The child attempting access first scanned and assessed the
action. Having selected this social object, the child then made evident his or
her desire to join by manipulating objects in the same manner as the others.
This parallel manipulation represented an efficient way to signal intent. In
the following example, Mark joined in with Tims activity by utilizing this
access strategy.

19/12/78N Tim is busy putting some blocks together. Mark has walked
over to these blocks with a wooden truck. He is running his truck up and
down Tims ramp making car noises. Tim allows him to do this and joins
Mark in assembling the ramp.

Similarly, Symie allows Elise and Debbie to participate with her in pouring
water from one container to the next.

05/12/78N Symie is at the water table. She is pouring water into the
containers and smiling. Elise and Debbie try to pour some water into
Symies container and she allows them to do this until they have over-
flowed the water in the container.

In both these cases, nonverbal dialogue prevailed. Through action
reproduction newcomers mapped their behavior onto that of others. This
was not a passive but rather an active repetition which allowed entry into
the others social environment. As Garvey (1977) has explained, repetition
and repetition with variation are essential ways in which children
56
synchronize behavior and thus establish a framework for continued
interaction. Action reproduction signaled the arriving childs desire to join.
It provided an open and non-threatening channel for further elaboration of
the social act. Others then had the opportunity to respond by incorporating
newcomers into the act or by rebuffing their attempts. As a least-adult
observer, action reproduction was the first technique I learned. By carefully
and patiently doing what the others were doing, I provided the children an
opportunity to observe and react to me.

4/10/79N I went to the sandbox. Stephanie, Kristin, Brock, Lindsey, and I
were making cakes. I sat down and filtered sand through my fingers.
Lindsey looks over and offers me some sand. I take it, silently, and put it
on her pile. We continue building this way for a few minutes. Eventually
Lindsey holds out her hand and says Cake.

Most often, action reproduction results in successful group entry, eventual
acceptance into an ongoing episode (Corsaro, 1979). When combined with the
technique of monitoring, these two nonverbal strategies proved highly
successful. Their success as access rituals is explained by the type of
interactional possibilities they opened up for the participants.
For most of the younger children, action reproduction involved the
physical manipulation of objects. Sand was patted, water was poured, and
playdough was stretched. Shared objects provided a link between children,
an avenue for the creation of a joint social act. With young childrens
physical manipulation of objects we see clearly how crucial sharing objects
is to social interchange. Through joint manipulation, children experience
others attitudes toward and use of objects. This is what Mead (1938)
called experiencing the inside of an object. Children become aware of
others differing reactions to objects. So objects now appear stubborn,
resistant, and less easily controlled. By experiencing others responses to a
physical thing, children get outside of themselves and take the role of the
other child toward their own use of this item. This role taking occurs
through a silent conversation of gestures in which children exchange and
adjust their use of objects. Physical objects become a vehicle for symbolic
interaction. By sharing objects, children create joint meanings. Mutual
manipulation becomes a social structure in which children negotiate further
lines of action. As children grow older and more experienced, they can
mentally reproduce actions others are seen as performing (Garvey, 1977).
Presumably this emerging capacity to construct cognitive representations of
actions and events has its initial beginnings in joint physical action
reproduction.
As a least-adult participant, I monitored and reproduced childrens behavior.
Yet I experienced this continual mapping as frustrating. Exchanges of sand
food, a particular favorite at both centers, often persisted for twenty minutes.
Moreover, childrens initiation of further activities and their turn-taking lapses
seemed longer than adult sequences. Often I longed to speed up the action and
fill up the empty conversational space. Even when the acts themselves expanded
to include five children, a common feature of repetitive frames (Mandell, 1986),
the pace and content of these exchanges felt confining. I had to remind myself
57
that both monitoring and action reproduction represent the beginning phases of
the process in which children actively gathered and created social information.
As such, they could not be hurried into an adult tempo.
Object Involvement Openers
Access rituals represented initial ways children structured joint acts. In both
centers, children needed to understand both nonverbal and verbal strategies in
order to build peer episodes. Verbal access rituals included object involvement
openers and supplications. Older children were more likely to rely on explicit
verbal messages than were the younger 2- and 3-year-olds.
Object involvement opener represented the linguistic equivalents to action
reproductions. Children verbally identified their action plans using declaratives
(Im a fireman!), commands (You be a fireman!), and direct questions (Are
you a fireman?). Since all three types addressed the core of social exchanges,
peers promptly replied. Objects constituted the center of childrens social
behavior. Object involvement rituals thus announced action plans and
displayed childrens willingness to be joined by others in creating novel actions
around these objects.
Declaratives can be either primarily gestural in nature or used in conjunction
with verbal explanations. In this example, the child declared her open script
using monster gestures and sounds:

28/11/78N Abby comes up to me screaming and gesturing like a monster.
I scream, monster style, back. She screeches again at me and leaves.

In his analysis of declaratives, Corsaro (1979b) analyzed baby animal talk
separately and discovered that these forms refer to phonetic strings often
produced with high pitch confined primarily to the subordinate position in role
play. In this example, Abby merely indicated an open script which I had the
option of picking up on. Other cases used gestures alone as scripts.
In contrast to nonverbal invitations to join, the majority of declaratives
were centered around verbal exclamations. Linguistic gestures often
evoked meaningful responses in children who used and understood similar
messages. As Mead (1938) has explained, children use language gestures
to initiate social acts. Language provokes linguistic responses from
interactants which leads to joint manipulation of common objects.
Language thus facilitates the process of interactional adjustment in a way
not found with nonverbal gestures. Peer episodes based on verbal
exchanges stimulate more complex action plots. The active role taking
which emerges from this type of communication allows children more
opportunity to reflect and respond to their own and others behavior with
more elaborate lines of action.
Commands also represent object-involvement openers in a manner similar to
declaratives. Imperatives are another way children begin to construct scripts
around social objects. In these typical examples, children explicitly announced
their action plans and signaled a participants role:
58
22/6/77E Saskia rides her big wheels into me. She says You are hurt
(declarative). Get on the ambulance (command). We are going to the
hospital (declarative).
29/11/78N Elsie conies up to me in the gym, takes my hand and leads me
back to the gym mats, saying Go to the fire station.

Commands are an access strategy used to facilitate engagement in public
alignments. Corsaro (1979) has suggested that their main function is to control
the behavior of other interactants by acknowledging a specific-topic, activity or
role as constituting the focus of involvement. Children issued many commands
to me, thus validating my role as an acceptable, least-adult participant.
Less successful than declaratives and imperatives as access rituals were direct
questions. Children verbally requested others engagement (Do you want to
play?) and gesturally labeled the involvement object. In the following example,
the request was denied.

15/05/79N In the puzzle corner, Debbie, Brad and Rod were each putting
their own puzzles together. Brad turns to Rod and says, Want to play with
me? Rod replies, You play.
Supplications
Similarly unpopular were supplications in the form of pleading, begging, and
negotiated queries. Please let me play and Ill be your friend if you let me play
were infrequently used even though they usually resulted in successful entry.
This type of formal, direct entry procedure appears contextually vague and
reminiscent of ritualistic adult approaches. Teachers often employ pleading
when they are soliciting cooperation (Please, lets sit down now, okay?). It
may be that children associate other childrens supplications with
nonnegotiable adult commands disguised as bargaining entreaties. Childrens
greater reliance on object involvement openers attests to the centrality of social
objects as mediating the actions of children and peers.
Both direct questioning and supplications are familiar adult access rituals in
interacting with children. In my initial interactions with the children I
mistakenly employed these traditional adult openers. By rebuffing these rituals,
the children forced me to adopt their access techniques. As an adult participant
I initially relied too heavily on verbal communication and neglected the
childrens reliance on gestural explanations.
Conclusion
In this account I have presented a completely involved research role, that of
least-adult, as an example for pursuing participant observation with young
children. I conceptualize being least-adult as a membership role which suspends
adult notions of cognitive, social, and intellectual superiority and minimizes
59
physical differences by advocating that adult researchers closely follow
childrens ways and interact with children within their perspective. Achieving a
close involvement with small children is accomplished by sharing social objects.
Through joint manipulation of objects, children and the least-adult researcher
take each other into account and create social meaning. By acting with children
in their perspective, adults gain an understanding of childrens actions.
This account outlines some of the dimensions of the least-adult role and
chronicles dilemmas of role enactment. I have discussed challenges of following
children, understanding their language, distinguishing noise, identifying with
adult supervisors of children, enduring role tests, establishing rapport with
children and adopting childrens access rituals. While field workers are loathe
to relate mistakes, such acknowledgment enables future studies to avoid these
errors and advance methodological pursuits. Research into the worlds of
children reveals the complex, rich, and situated details of their day-to-day
accomplishments. By trying on different participant observational roles with
children, field workers gain insights into childrens patterns of behavior. The
research challenge is to capture the dynamics of childrens interactions and to
fit into childrens interpretative acts without disturbing the flow. Least-adult
suggests a potential means of achieving these goals.
Authors note: I wish to thank Blanche Geer for her encouragement and
creative feedback on earlier versions of this article.
Notes
1 Speier (1976) calls this the adult ideological bias in studying children.
2 I am grateful to Blanche Geer for suggesting I stress the significance of shared objects
in adult-child interaction (Personal communication, 1985).
3 Becker et al. (1961) first originated this use of recording data and the time of
observation as a validity check. The abbreviation O.C. refers to the term
observers comments, which are the researchers way to record personal reflections
and examine accumulating biases. [The designations E and N refer to two
research settings, Eastern and Northern.] As Johnson (1975) notes though, personal
accounts of field work mistakes and unease are usually presented in a doctored
fashion for publication purposes.
4 Corsaro (1981) noted the same increase in interest when he introduced video taping.
5 The teachers also made increasing demands on my time. During a period in
Hamilton when the staff was particularly shorthanded, my rapport with the
supervisor was such that she counted on my daily presence.

60
Chapter 5

Studying Children:
Phenomenological Insights
Commentary
In this article I detail some of the fundamental biases that adults have towards
children. By favoring one interpretation of childrens behavior over others without
empirical grounds for doing so, these biases impede sociological understanding.
The articles in Part II, Children in an Adult World, provide data to document
the existence of these biases; the articles in Part III, Children in a Childs World,
exemplify the kinds of insights that can emerge when these biases are set aside.
The first bias I describe involves, among other things, taking socialization as
a fact rather than as merely one way of thinking about children and their
activities. The criticisms of socialization offered in Chapter 2 serve as a
background for the somewhat more detailed ones offered here. The second bias
refers to what children are said to know and not know. (In philosophical
terminology, this concern with knowledge is called epistemology.)
As was noted in the introduction to Chapter 4, it is important to distinguish
between understanding children and working with children. The former is a
scientific undertaking, the latter an activity in the world of everyday life. In
science our concern is with truth; in everyday life our concerns are likely to
focus on practicality, truth at times being less relevant than what works. Adult
biases towards children have certain advantages in the world of everyday life,
advantages that may account for the existence, use, and tenacity of these biases.
That biases have advantages, however, does not mean that they are valid but
only that they can be useful. Thus there may be practical, political reasons for
maintaining these biases when working with children even if these biases are
questionable or incorrect.
Since initially it may seem odd to claim that in everyday life fiction may
prove more useful than truth, I will provide an example of how a bias with
questionable validity can be of practical use. As a teacher trying to gear my
teaching to the intellectual abilities of my students, I could seek what is taken to
From Human Studies 91:7182 (1986). Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht.
Printed in the Netherlands. Reprinted by permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.
61
Studying Children: Phenomenological Insights
be objective evidence about those abilitiesSAT scores, grades, and the like. In
my own teaching, however, I have found it practically useful not to seek such
evidence but instead to adopt the bias that my students are intellectually
capable and to teach accordingly. Whether or not my bias is valid, I find that it
seems to work, e.g. I have been told that my students are brighter than those in
other classes and that even the same student is brighter in my classes than in
others. My bias may well guide my behavior so that by treating students as
bright I aid them in responding accordingly (a process sociologists refer to as
self-fulfilling prophecy). Whatever the process by which the outcome is
achieved, however, I find it of practical use maintain my bias.
In reading this article, it may be useful to consider the practical implications
of the insights provided. Where those implications are such that it seems
advisable in working with children to maintain rather that eliminate a
particular bias, it will still be useful to know that one is doing so. Biases can
facilitate action in the world of everyday life, but recognizing biases as such
provides a flexibility that is not available when those biases are taken as truth.
F.C.W.
Introduction
The ideas to be presented in this paper emerge from a phenomenological
approach to the sociological enterprise. [Phenomenology is a philosophical
perspective that some sociologists, including many of those whose work
appears in this volume, use as the foundation upon which to construct their
specific theories of how the social world works.] In particular they derive from
Husserls directive to respect the originary right of all data. Such respect
entails setting aside belief and doubt in ontological and epistemological matters
[i.e. belief and doubt in what is real (ontology) and what is known
(epistemology)]. There are some important advantages to be gained from
adopting such a stance towards children and there is a serious practical
problem.
First, the advantages: Seeing children as nothing special but simply as actors
in the social world makes it possible to draw on social science resources not
usually applied to children. Routinely, in seeking to understand children,
traditional sociology has either turned to psychological theorists (especially
Freud, Erikson, and Piaget) or elaborated on sociological theories of
socialization. As a consequence, the sociological study of children has neither
benefited from nor contributed to sociological understanding in general but has
for the most part been an independent sphere of study. I contend that taking
children seriously as sociological subjects encourages the application of a wide
range of sociological concepts and theories to childrens activities and
experiences (see, for example, my study of deviance in a kindergarten
classroom, 1987, [Chapter 8 in this volume] and Ardeners idea of muted
voices, 1977) and the application of concepts developed in studying children to
adult activities (consider, for example, adult instances of the Opies notion of
half-belief, 1959 [Chapter 10 of this volume]). In this way sociological
knowledge about children and sociological understanding in general can be
enhanced.
62
Second, the disadvantage: To take childrens ideas, beliefs, activities, and
experiences seriously, as real and as embodying knowledge, is to risk being
taken for a fool [a point that was eloquently evidenced by Mandell in the
previous chapter]. When I as a sociologist take seriously that which in everyday
life is not, when I question what all adults know, when I entertain childish ideas
and immature formulations, my standing both as an adult and as a sociologist
comes into question. The criticism of Laud Humphreys for his studies of sex in
public bathrooms (1970), criticisms which in a variety of ways amounted to
labeling him a dirty old man, still allowed him his adult status. To put ones
adult status in question is a serious matter indeed.
Perhaps adulthood is at heart a tenuous achievement, being adult a continuous
accomplishment, and the serious questioning of adult understandings thus a
challenge to a fragile view of the world. Children constantly threaten adults: their
knowledge, the very achievement of adulthood itself, and adult accommodations
to issues from childhood that were never resolved but simply overridden with
adult conceptions. Much of adult knowledge is based on faithfaith in the
correctness of what people were taught as children. Detailed sociological
examination of childrens creation and sustenance of world views and the ways in
which children do and do not adopt adult world views can provide the data for an
examination of the nature of adult conceptions and the differing degrees of
certainty which accompany them.
What seems clear at the present time is that adults, including sociologists,
display a clear reluctance to take childrens ideas seriously and even express
actual hostility. An anonymous reviewer of Mandells work (Mandell, 1984a),
in a rather vituperative set of comments, saw her claims of childrens
competence as self-evidently erroneous and as evidence of her in-competence.
The reviewer asserted, without substantiation, that children are cognitively
immature and do not yet possess the social skills appropriate for independent
social living. Indeed this reviewer accused her of anthropomorphizing
children. That a sociologist could reject proposals of childrens competence out
of hand suggests the professional constraints on such study.
Nonetheless, in what follows I claim that taking children seriously as
sociological subjects is a legitimate, though difficult, undertaking. I will detail
some of the major problems and suggest the kinds of insights that emerge from
the approach I am suggesting.
Identification and Suspension of Adult Beliefs
Children occupy an unusual place among data, for in everyday life adults
routinely set themselves up as the understanders, interpreters, and translators of
childrens behavior. Adult common-sense explanations have been generally
adopted by sociologists studying children and thus the sociological literature is
full of studies of common-sense explanations of childrens behavior. The
absence of childrens explanations is rarely missed because its very existence is
not recognized.
Some sociologists have indeed addressed the topic of the current limits and
future possibilities of studying children sociologically and critiques, theories,
63
and data exist (see, for example, the works of Mackay, 1973; Skolnick, 1976;
Denzin, 1979; Mandell, 1984a, 1984b; and Goode, 1983, 1984, and 1986). I
want to move forward with those ideas as a basis and to demonstrate the kinds
of biases that have hampered the sociological study of children and its general
acceptance by sociologists. I will do this by identifying and exploring two
fundamental adult biases that particularly distort childrens worlds and that I
judge to be fruitful candidates for suspension in the research enterprise. I urge
the consideration of both these biases and these kinds of biases. An examination
of them suggests the many kinds of topics that reveal themselves when these
biases are suspended.
Bias No. 1: Children are unfinished, in process, not anywhere yet
This bias is central to the notion of socialization but, more importantly,
pervades adult common-sense views of children. Indeed in everyday life it has
the status of a truism. Children are viewed as in their very nature not grown up
and thus not something rather than something.
1
In sociological study, and psychological work as well, less evaluative terms
may be used to describe children, but such terms preserve rather than suspend
the bias. Developmental theory is most overt in this regard, for those who have
not achieved adulthood are viewed as in some sense underdeveloped. To be
precognitive is to be defined in terms of ones lacks. There is an assumption that
no one wants to be precognitive; it is not an achievement. The notion of
children as immature is a similar negative category. To speak of children as
lacking language ability is again to focus on what they dont possess. Terms
applied to children and even claimed to be objective or neutral may be, when
applied to adults, terms of criticism or contempt; the very label of childish is
negative.
In everyday life we adults take for granted that children as a category know
less than adults, have less experience, are less serious, and are less important
than adults in the ongoing work of everyday life. I suggest that for the word less
we as sociologists try substituting the word different and consider the
theoretical and methodological implications. What is childrens knowledge and
in what ways is it like and unlike adults knowledge? The distinction between
adult and child may become irrelevant as we come to focus simply on varieties
of knowledge. To say that children have different experiences from adults
focuses on a researchable topic, whereas the designations more/less clearly
ground study in judgment. The very idea that experiences are cumulative might
be set as problematic, for when are experiences constructed on those that go
before and when are they new productions? To see children as less serious than
adults is again to judge; to ask how children display seriousness is to set a
research problem. To examine childrens part in day-to-day life is to ask
questions not only about their nature but about their political position in the
social worldwhat can they do and what are they allowed to do? If children
were by nature non-participants in the world of work, child labor laws would
seem unnecessary. The central suggestion here is to see the bias of defining
children in terms of what they cannot do and to recommend consideration of
what they do do.
64
The sociological concept of socialization embodies the bias under
consideration here, for children are viewed as the objects, the raw material of
socialization. Existent criticisms of the oversocialized view of children
(Wrong, 1961) and of socialization as an adult perspective (Mackay, 1973 [see
Chapter 3 in this volume]) serve as the background for my setting the entire
notion of socialization as problematic.
Socialization takes for granted the adult common-sense assumption that
children need to be brought up. I want to claim that the statement children need
to be reared, raised, etc. is but part of a conditional statement of the form
children need to be reared, raised, etc. if they are to become adults just like us,
if they are to support the world weve made, if they are to outgrow or get
over their childish behavior, etc. Children as children disrupt and challenge the
adult taken-for-granted world and for that reason are a political problem: their
knowledge contradicts what adults claim is obvious and known to everybody.
What is presented in much of the sociological literature as childrens needs may
well be more accurately understood as adults needs. Fictional accounts of
unsocialized children, e.g. Goldings Lord of the Flies (1955) and Hughes A
High Wind in Jamaica (1928), indicate a challenge to commonsense views that
children cannot manage on their own; indeed they seem to manage, but in ways
that adults find abhorrent. The very fact that they manage at all may be more
abhorrent to adults, for it gives lie to the claim the children need adults in some
absolute sense.
If children are by nature social and capable of acting in their own terms (and
the Ik studied by Turnbull, 1972, provide anthropological support for such a
claim), then adults claims that they cannot takes on the status of an ideological
position rather than a scientific fact and can be seen as political moves to
control children and turn them into adults, whatever adult turns out to be.
Adults abilities to sustain their common-sense views in the face of childrens
challenges is certainly a political advantage as well as a reflection of that
advantage. As an adult I am permitted to override a childs view merely because
I am an adult. To refuse to do so as a sociologist studying children is to show the
possibility that children have competing world views.
What I find a particularly intriguing idea is the possibility that what is called
socialization is a far less certain and fundamental process than is commonly
imagined. If it is a fully interactive process, with participants engaged in a
struggle rather than in a one-sided helping, leading, nurturing, rearing
relationship, what emerges is the strong likelihood that it may appear to work
far more than it indeed does. Consider that the process of socialization entails
not children becoming adults but learning to act like adults. We might ask: are
children truly socialized or do they simply learn to translate their experiences
into adult common-sense terms? Many of the adult ideas we claim to possess
we may not fully accept but only talk as if we did. The unsettling aspect of this
consideration is, of course, that there are no adults, only adult actorsa
sociologically plausible but common-sensically disorienting idea.
Piagets study of childrens learning the principle of conservation (1952)
serves as a useful illustration. Children fail to see, for example, that two equal-
sized balls of clay remain the same size even if one is shaped into a pancake;
they claim that the pancake shape is larger. Their recognition of the error of
their ways is taken as an indication of maturity. Do adults in fact learn this
65
principle or simply learn to utter the principle but continue to act on an earlier
intuitive sense? If you ask me which of two items is largerand the very asking
suggests to me some kind of a trickthen I invoke the principle so I can give the
right answer. When however, at a party, the hors doeuvres tray is passed, I tend
to take the one that looks like the biggest and somehow this look matters to me.
Not only can socialization be demonstrated to be political, but it can be
shown to be carried out in such a way in everyday life that its inevitablity and
success are assumed whenever possible. One common technique in socialization
is to respond to children as if they were already socialized in a particular sphere.
The interpretation of childrens behavior in adult terms thus serves as a mode of
socialization rather than of understanding. To say to a child enjoying a repast of
mudpies, You dont want to do that. They taste awful! is not a statement of
fact, of a reality to which adults are privy but which holds for all; it is a way of
translating childrens experiences into adult terms so children will learn those
terms. In this process, childrens experiences go unrecognized by adults and
their continued existence for children is hampered by adult constraints on
childrens justifying their experiences. In elementary school a number of us
developed a taste for library paste and adults responded in ways that made clear
not only that we ought not to eat the paste but that it wasnt good. My adult
tastes do not include library paste, but I want to preserve my childhood
experience that it was goodthat it was to be sought out, enjoyed, and, further,
concealed from adults whose judgments prohibited such use and, less
successfully, such enjoyment.
I have argued that socialization can be conceived of as a political activity
engaged in by adults and as a claim made by those directing the process as
part of the way of bringing it about. If so, then research would seem to
require an investigation of these processes as topics themselves; a setting of
the whole idea of socialization as problematic rather than as a taken-for-
granted assumption; and a realization that the process itself has very
different appearances depending on where one is placed in the process.
Much that is available in the sociological literature is not sociological
analysis but a documentation of adult perspectives, valuable as data but not
as theory. What we dont have in any substantial way is data on childrens
perspectives on socialization, a perspective that only becomes accessible if
we suspend belief in children as unfinished, in process, not anywhere yet
and if we suspend a second fundamental bias, namely
Bias No. 2: Children are routinely wrong, in error, and dont
understand
In disputes between adults and children, like those between psychiatrists and
patients, the former is assumed to be right, at least, in Garfinkels terms, until
further notice (Garfinkel, 1967). Justification for this assumption may be made
in terms of childrens immaturity, etc., but such justification may not be asked
for because adults Tightness vis--vis children is itself a taken-for-granted
assumption. The inequality of power between adults and children further
reinforces this situation, making it possible for adults to decide arguments with
66
children by pulling rank. Argument-stoppers such as because I say so, because
Im your mother, stop arguing and just do it, suggest that on numerous
occasions adults do not need to explain the superiority of their judgment or
understand childrens points of view. One might notice a certain circularity
here, for children are wrong because they are immature and the evidence for
their immaturity is their error. Nonetheless, childrens views are routinely
discounted when they challenge adult views. To take childrens views seriously
is to allow them to contend with adult views on an equal basis, with the winner
not predetermined.
A consideration of childrens errors in playing formal games, i.e. those
with rules written by adults, will suggest some of the limits to understanding
imposed by this bias. Children are often said to play such games wrong, for
they do notsome say thus cannotfollow the rules. What is not generally
considered is whether children indeed accept such rules, intend to follow such
rules, and fail; or if instead they make up their own rules in their own ways
for their own purposes. That they violate adult standards is not at question;
that they fail to follow such standards is. That children can take adult-created
items, e.g. a pack of cards, with or without adult instruction or observation
of adult use, and fashion a workable gamestrange to adults but followable
by other childrenis denied existence as an accomplishment and set aside as
error. Adult correction may, however, destroy the game for children whose
own rules were working and acceptable in the context in which they were
being used. If adult rules are viewed as foreign and imposed on children
without their consent, childrens practices and their responses to adult
intervention begin to become clear.
A common practice of children, changing the rules as you go along, may be
offered as evidence of childrens violation of adult rules for making rules; or, the
violation may lie in childrens doing openly what adults see as legitimate only
when done covertly. Children change rules to their own advantage and other
children accept such action; it is adult participants who get bent out of shape by
such self-serving practices, though clearly in card games adults seek their own
advantage, though secretly or indirectly, as in bluffing.
Another instance of childrens error is their use of language in ways
different from adults, a practice that also leads to the presumption of their
inadequacy as describers of their own experiences. When adults cannot
understand childrens talk, the talk is faulted, That children can understand one
another is not taken as contradictory evidence. Similar to Goodes findings
about interactions between social workers and the retarded (1983), adults can
ask children to explain what another child has said and then judge the latter as
unable to speak or communicate. In the face of such contradictory data,
sociologists might expect that power issues rather than issues of ability and
competence are at the fore.
In many important respects childrens views are different from adults. That
adults in charge of children, like colonists in charge of natives, see their charges
as wrong is an important social fact, but that those in power are in some
absolute sense correct is a shaky foundation on which to construct sociological
insights.
And so we come to the question: can adults study children? I say no, not as
adults. Adults and children have separate versions of childhood. Adulthood is a
67
perspective, a way of being in the world, that embodies a particular stance
towards children, a stance that allows adults to deal with children in everyday
life but that limits sociological understanding. To ask adults (even in the guise
of sociologists) what children are like is on a par with asking jailers what
prisoners are like or asking dog trainers what dogs are like. They are like what
those doing the defining need to see them as like if they are to engage in the kind
of activities that involve those others.
Sociologists, however, can study children. If adult and child are seen not as
given in the nature of things but as social roles, then sociologists can suspend
their adult role much as they suspend other partisan roles as they carry out
research. What is necessary is that they see such a role as suspendable. To study
children sociologically involves asking what children are like in the social role
of child and in other roles as well. That adults treat child as a master status
(Hughes, 1945) is not to say that children do not play other roles invisible to
adults but available to sociologists who look.
Implications of Suspending Adult Beliefs
I am arguing that by suspending adult beliefs about children, sociologists can
claim children as full-fledged subjects of sociological understanding. The
particular strength of the view being espoused here is that it makes available for
wider application insights derived from such study and allows more general
sociological concepts, theories, and ideas to be applied to an understanding of
children. I have suggested in passing a number of fruitful areas of research on
children, areas that emerge when adult biases are suspended. I now want to
articulate some of those areas a bit more fully.
First, one can examine things that children can do and adults cannot or will
not. Only by suspending the assumption of adult superiority, however, can such
a research topic emerge. Then it becomes possible to look for things that
children can and do do better than or easier than adults. My first glimmer of
this idea came when my husband was learning to jump rope as part of an
exercise program, experiencing the difficulties one encounters in learning a new
adult activity. Looking out the window of the room where he was practicing to
the street below, I saw some 7- and 8-year-old girls jumping rope in the complex
and athletically sophisticated ways common to playgrounds. Young children,
were doing effortlessly what adults can find a difficult accomplishment. A
second example comes to mind, an old one in my experience but now more
significant: The tale is of a 3-year-old English-speaking child whose Danish-
speaking paternal grandmother came to visit for the first time. Within a week
this child was translating between his grandmother and his English-speaking
mother. How is this possible? How could he learn so apparently effortlessly
what his mother could not or did not? Once this topic is posed, a multitude of
examples emerge that might tell us a great deal about children and adults and
learning.
Second, one can explore the role of child as a role, for child and adult require
each other to play their roles. Indeed, adults recalling childhood experiences
2
can tell of altering their behavior in order to make it conform to adult
68
expectations of children. They can also remember adults altering the adult role
in interactions with children, as when adults run slower than they are able so
children will win races; what intrigues me is the fact that children know that
this is going on and may even work to sustain the fiction that the race is a fair
one. If we take seriously that child is a role, the following kinds of questions
become possible: How do children reconcile the conflicting expectations of
adults and peers? How do they deal with role strain and role conflict? Where do
they find backstage? What do they reveal to and conceal from adults? How do
they resolve the problem of engaging in what adults define as age-appropriate
activities when they are deemed inappropriate by those who are expected to
engage in them? What parts of the child role does one give up on the road to
adulthood, what parts does one keep openly, what parts does one keep but
conceal? Are there adults who still sleep with the lights on?
To recognize that child is a role is to suspend the assumption that childhood
has some absolute, real, transcendent existence beyond the social, an
assumption that embodies the very topic it could endeavor to study.
Alternatively, we could study the category of child as a social category, focusing
as Becker (1963) might on those who are labeled children, investigating how
one comes to be so labeled, considering the social characteristics of those so
labeled, their responses to that label, and so on. If the very facticity of children
is set as problematic, a host of sociological questions become available for
study. If we can see childhood as an achievement, we can see how childhood is
achieved and pursue the topic of adulthood and its achievement as a related and
significant question.
Third, if we see children as actors in the social world, we can ask how their
actions constrain, facilitate, encourage, and in myriad ways have implications
for others, adults in particular. Adults are known to make children eat their
vegetables if those adults are to claim they are being good models, but less
noticeable is that children make adults eat their vegetables. Can we say that
children make adults watch their language, follow rules more carefully, bring
their talk and action into closer consistency? Make may be a trifle strong, but
something is going on here. How do adults alter their behavior in the presence
of children? Do children in some sense have power over adults and, if so, what
kind of power is it and how does it operate? That children can learn at rather
young ages how to play adults against one another, can know whom to ask first
for the necessary permissions, can test adults to see what limits exist, suggest a
certain use of power that is not routinely acknowledged as such in everyday
lifethese childrens strategies are known to adults but their implications for
childrens competence seem to be submerged in the general assumptions about
childrens inabilities.
Fourth, perhaps the most fruitful line of investigation phenomenologically is
of the praxis or lived experience of childhood. What issues arise in being a
child? I offer the following partial list:

a. sustaining their own views in the face of others challenges;
b. defining their experiences in others terms, terms not necessarily
designed for that purpose;
c. reconciling the world as given in experience with others
interpretations of that world;
69
d. finding and playing roles other than those provided by the social
world;
e. adapting to a world not of their making, in many ways designed for
those with other resources and abilities;
f. gaining power/adapting to lack of power;
g. meeting the expectations of others in ways that leave ones sense of self
intact and that support or at least do not violate ones own experiences
and sense of reality.

It is worth noting that none of these issues, phrased as they are, turn out to be
unique to childrens experiences.
If this paper has achieved its purpose, readers should now be able to continue
on their own.
Notes
1 The study of children brings to light the idea of negative categories, i.e. categories
constructed on the absence of one or more characteristics, e.g. pre-cognitive, non-
verbal, immature, developmentally delayed. Such categories are akin to the fault-
finding process that Goode (1983) finds implicit in social work practice, a process
based on the identification of what one cannot do rather than on ones abilities. I am
claiming 1) that children may indeed be doing what we claim that they cannot (e.g.
talking, even though adults may not understand), 2) that not doing is not necessarily
an act or a perceived lack, and 3) that children are doing other things, things that go
unnoticed by adults.
2 I have elicited some very promising data by asking adults to recall their childhood
experiences with adults. I have used such questions as: What kinds of things did
adults do that bothered you? How did adults treat you? What did it feel like to be a
child? I think the limits of such retrospective data may be counterbalanced by the
fact that adults have the power to speak of that which as children it was politically
wise for them to conceal. Based on responses to these questions, I have casually
asked children about these experiences and have reason to believe that this would be
a fruitful line for further research. [Since I wrote this article, I have undertaken such
research. Some of the findings are presented in Chapter 15 of this volume.]
71

Part II

Children in an Adult World

The four papers in Part II bring forward for attention aspects of the adult
worlds in which children live and the views about children that are a part of
those adult worlds. They all serve as a basis of contrast to the articles in Part III,
which describe children in worlds of their own making. The articles in Part II
were not written explicitly to describe adult worlds, but all contribute to an
understanding of worlds through examples: a humorous account of pets
discussing their role as child substitutes; a report of a study of children using
marijuana with the guidance of or approval of parents; a description of
teachers taken-for-granted rules for kindergarten students; and a description of
the ways that adults look at children.
None of these papers claims that the adult perspective is the only one or the
correct one. By documenting the existence of an adult perspective, however,
each serves as a basis for raising important questions about the implications of
such a perspective for understanding children and for engaging in interaction
with them. The power that adults have over childrennot only over their
physical beings but also over their ideas, beliefs, world views, and activities
emerges clearly and sometimes starkly.
Throughout Part I of this book sociology has been faulted for assuming an
adult perspective rather than seeing that perspective as a suitable topic for
sociological study and as an important feature in the social worlds of children.
If this criticism is accepted, then the many studies of children that have been
conducted from a taken-for-granted adult perspective cannot be used
sociologically as studies of children; they can, however, be used as data, as
studies of adult perspectives. Having read the papers in Part II, readers should
then be able to read the abundant available studies conducted from a taken-for-
granted adult perspective as studies not of the world but of the adult world and
to benefit from the authors insights without being restricted by their limits.
Reading studies in this way can provide new insights into the ways that adults
construct childrens social worlds, ways that are often incompatible with
childrens constructions.
F.C.W.

73
Chapter 6

Once Upon a Time
Norman Waksler
Commentary
This light little essay on pets as child substitutes is included here as a way of
bringing forth for examination certain taken-for-granted ideas about what, in
adult terms, children are for. The sociological significance of this essay should
not be exaggerated. Waksler is a fiction writer, not a scientist, and his work can
be read as an entertainment. For our purposes here, however, his essay also
enables us to raise a number of significant issues.
The very idea that children are for something challenges taken-for-granted
beliefs. To ask adults why they want children can be viewed as posing a foolish
question, for it is commonly assumed that people indeed do want children and
that those who do not want to have children are somehow either deprived or
peculiar. The extensive medical energies devoted to making the infertile fertile
testifies to the cultural support for the desire for children. If called upon to account
for their desire for children, adults are able to draw on the culture of which they
are a part, providing such commonsense answers as because I love children, to
be fulfilled, to carry on the family name. Those who do not want children have
no such readily available accounts. Waksler challenges the view that having
children is normal and having pets is some kind of displacement or weak substitute.
In presenting such an idea, he reformulates the notion of what a pet is and is for
and makes it possible to rethink the notion of what a child is and is for.
The truthfulness of Wakslers picture of pets is clearly not at issue here. What
his portrayal can do is direct us to questions about the idealized view of
childrena view that pervades not only the popular but also the social science
literature. What family functions do children in fact serve? What do they do?
What are they good for? What is the role of parental expectations? Do such
expectations benefit children? adults? both? neither? If people can be said to
have children in the same way that they are said to have pets, to whom do
children belong? Do they indeed belong to their parents?
This essay originally appeared in The Cambridge Express, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
May 7, 1983. Daniel D.Savage, Editor and Publisher.
74
The pets discussion of affection can lead us to ask: how in fact is
affection displayed towards children? Are some kinds of children more
likely recipients than others? Children deemed flawed or ugly might well
find themselves in the position of the turtle, but without the turtles
psychological resources for finding such a state of affairs normal. The
turtles unsentimental view of the entire matter also reminds us of just
how often discussions about children are characterized by sentimentality.
An unsentimental view of human behavior can disclose taken-for-granted
assumptions worthy of sociological analysis. Furthermore, as the turtle
says, The child substitute types just fail to grant us the breadth and
potential of our characters. By freeing our analysis of both sentimentality
and taken-for-granted assumptions, we are able to address ourselves to
actual adult-child interactions in everyday life and to childrens characters
as themselves.
Wakslers essay can lead us to a recognition of assumptions as assumptions,
open to question and to study. Taken-for-granted assumptions can be difficult
to discover, especially when they are related to that which is highly valued.
Sociologists concerned with unearthing taken-for-granted assumptions are
constantly alert for methods of doing so. Humorous, even irreverent,
presentations are one source of such insights. Wakslers essay can perhaps be
best appreciated if it is read for fun but with attention to the common-sense
ideas about adults and children that it challenges.
F.C.W.
Once Upon a Time
Once upon a time, there were four pets sitting around the living room of an
evening while their childless owners were out. Did you see Victor Burgs article
in the Express, asked one, a small black dog, remarkably fuzzy, whod once
been described as unnervingly cute by a friend of the owners.
Which? said the cheerful teal blue parakeet.
The one where he claimed that having pets is a way of having children, said
the fuzzy black dog.
I saw that, said the lean brown dog with a whitening muzzle and a
perpetual expression of curiosity. A most unfortunate conclusion on his part.
Master and mistress were steamed.
And well they might be, said the scripta elegans, i.e. a dime-store turtle 16-
years-old who was the size of half a grapefruit. And so was I. I hardly consider
myself a child substitute. Coldblooded creatures dont inspire warmblooded
responses after all, and I cant very well imagine being considered the
replacement for some Billy or Mary who never was.
True enough for you, said the parakeet. But people do have the habit of
talking baby talk to their budgies.
Just a manner of speaking, said the brown dog with the white muzzle, but
they hardly have the expectations of a parakeet that theyd have of a child.
Thats right, chipped in the cute fuzzy dog. Theyre hardly going to expect
you to grow up morally straight, go to college, and avoid espousing causes of
75
Once Upon a Time
which they disapprove. Theyd be happy if you just wouldnt eat their plants.
Theyd be happy if we all didnt eat their plants for that matter.
Besides, said the turtle, How do you speak to a parakeet? In basso
profundo? Anyway, they dont have the expectations of birds that they do of
dogs, thats for certain.
But that hardly makes us child substitutes, pointed out the brown dog.
Well, they do lavish all that affection on us, said the black dog, and if they
had children, mightnt they lavish it there instead?
Oh sure, and if they had children and pets, wouldnt they lavish it in both
places? said the parakeet. I suspect that affectionate people who have children
and/or pets are affectionate to them, and unaffectionate people who have
children and/or pets are unaffectionate to them.
Speaking as one who is neither fluffy nor fuzzy, said the turtle, I think that
people who claim that pets are a way of having children are just thinking of the
equation of a fuzzy, warm puppy or kitten with a chubby, warm human baby,
and then extrapolating without considering the implications. People do get
similarly gooey over all three.
Indeed, said the brown dog. But like children, we once-fuzzy, chubby
things grow up, and I hardly imagine that Im now playing the part of a
surrogate for the adolescent daughter master and mistress could never have.
Theyve never even asked whos taking me to the prom! she added, rolling
over on her back and kicking her four legs in the air in mock despair.
Well then, how do you explain all that affection? asked the black dog, after
an irrepressible, but good-natured nip at the brown ones ear.
Maybe they just like us, said the parakeet.
Maybe were just likable, said the brown dog.
Now theres a point, said the fuzzy black dog, her button eyes aglint as she
considered. We animals do have some fairly charming characteristics of our
own, dont we? After all, why assume that anything amiable about pets is
amiable only because its actually an attribute of children?
Youre right, said the turtle. We pets have our particular species charms
I my ancient floating turtle wisdom; parakeet his bounding budgie bravura;
black dog her terrier alertness, and brown dog her intelligent greyhound
driveand we have endearing personality characteristics like friendliness,
curiosity, senses of humor, slyness, and a good number of other emotional and
behavioral capacities, some of which are especially brought out in contact with
people. The child substitute types just fail to grant us the breadth and potential
of our characters.
Not to mention, said the parakeet, that if you dont think of us as a mere
child substitute, you have to start seeing that were all kinds of things
acquaintances, friends in one degree or another, housemates, useful dependents,
honored guests, retainers, entertainers, you name it. Interspecial relations are
much more interesting than the parent/child paradigm allowsdont you all
think so?
Well, said the brown dog with a toothy grin. You know what mistress has
always said.
What? asked the parakeet, who hadnt been in the family as long as the
brown dog.
76
Mistress says that having children is the way the people compensate for
their inability to raise pets.
Right on! chorused the others, who, it must be admitted, were a little out
of date in their jargon. But this kind of thing is to be expected of talking
animals.
77

Chapter 7

Tinydopers: A Case Study of
Deviant Socialization
Patricia A.Adler and Peter Adler
Commentary
The Adlers article introduces a subject that some may never have considered a
possibility, namely marijuana smoking by children from ages 0 to 8. In their
presentation four issues arise to which it is useful to direct attention: 1) morality
and the sociological enterprise; 2) diversity in adult perspectives; 3)
concealment; and 4) social change as a continuous process.
Morality and the Sociological Enterprise
Readers may find themselves with varied moral responses to the data. It is
important to note, however, that the authors themselves neither recommend
nor encourage any particular response, for their concern is merely with
presenting their findings. Some may want to judge the authors silence on the
subject of morality and the absence of condemnation as tacit approval for the
activities they studied, but such a judgment seems to me unwarranted. The
authors simply do not see their sociological task as requiring their moral
judgment but rather as requiring presentation of data as it appears to those
actually engaging in the activities under study.
This article can serve as a useful vehicle for considering ones own values and
the often ambiguous and contradictory forms they can take. Thus those who
are morally opposed to any drug use may judge harshly the parents described in
the article, perhaps even labeling them child abusers, while those who
themselves smoke marijuana or approve of its use by others may nonetheless
object to marijuana smoking by children. (Note, however, that some readers
may themselves be labeled by adults as children, and, on this basis, those adults
may see them as too young to smoke marijuana.) Some readers may also find
From Symbolic Interaction, Spring 1978, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 90104. Reprinted by
permission of JAI Press Inc., Greenwich, Connecticut.
78
that in their own responses they sound more like their own parents than like
themselves, thereby gaining insight into that adult perspective.
Diversity in Adult Perspectives
Although the Adlers studied both adults and children, their analytic perspective is
implicitly adult and does not provide significant data about childrens perspectives
in childrens own terms. (When this issue arises in their article, I have provided a
footnote to call it to attention.) The theorists they citein particular Piaget, Mead,
and Eriksontake for granted childrens inabilities and incompetencies. The Adlers
do, however, provide extremely useful data to document the existence of quite
different adult worlds in which children might live. The adult perspective held by
the parents described by the Adlers is clearly different from the adult perspectives
held by those who do not use marijuana, by those who see it as an adults-only
substance, and by those who condemn its use at all.
This description of children engaged in marijuana smoking shows that
activity both as possible and, in terms of the perspective of the adults studied, as
justifiable. Those adults defined marijuana smoking as an activity that adults
and children can reasonably share. Rather than concealing their activities from
children, they urged them to participate, in their terms opting for openness
rather than hypocrisy. Certainly the situation can be defined otherwise, but it is
sociologically important to recognize the definitions applied by those engaged
in the activity itself.
Concealment
What activities are acceptable for adults but ought to be concealed from
children? What does such a distinction imply about the nature, capabilities, and
opportunities of children? Under what circumstances and for what reasons do
adults modify or conceal activities in the presence of children? Articulation of
ones own views can serve as a useful basis for examining taken-for-granted
assumptions. The resulting personal answers are not sociological answers, but
they can serve as useful sociological data.
Social Change as a Continuous Process
This study predates the War on Drugs and the increasing condemnation of
drug use. At the time of the study, drug use, and marijuana use in particular, was
viewed in some circles as a rather routine form of recreation. The claims the
authors make about the increasing normality of marijuana, such as their
statement that Marijuana usemay soon take its place with alcohol, its
prohibition a thing of the past, certainly sound odd in the 1990s, and there is
no way of knowing how it will sound in 2000. Any model of social change is
likely to need revision when the postulated future becomes the present.
The authors claims should be seen as providing a description of the times in
79
Tinydopers
which they were writing and the historical setting for the actions they describe.
To judge drug users of the 1960s and 1970s by moral standards of the 1990s is
to distort the data and the understandings to which it can lead.
F.C.W.
Tinydopers: A Case Study of Deviant Socialization
Marijuana smoking is now filtering down to our youngest generation; a
number of children from 08 years old are participating in this practice under
the influence and supervision of their parents. This phenomenon, tinydoping,
raises interesting questions about changes in societal mores and patterns of
socialization. We are not concerned here with the desirability or morality of the
activity. Instead, we will discuss the phenomenon, elucidating the diverse range
of attitudes, stratagems and procedures held and exercised by parents and
children.
An examination of the history and cultural evolution of marijuana over the
last several decades illuminates the atmosphere in which tinydoping arises.
Marijuana use, first located chiefly among jazz musicians and ghetto
communities, eventually expanded to the highly alienated young in flight from
families, schools and conventional communities (Simon and Gagnon, 1968:60.
See also Goode, 1970; Carey, 1968; Kaplan, 1971; and Grinspoon, 1971).
Blossoming in the mid-1960s, this youth scene formed an estranged and deviant
subculture offsetting the dominant cultures work ethic and instrumental success
orientation. Society reacted as an angry parent, enforcing legal, social and moral
penalties against its rebellious children. Today, however, the pothead subculture
has eroded and the population of smokers has broadened to include large numbers
of middle class and establishment-oriented people.
Marijuana, then, may soon take its place with alcohol, its prohibition a thing
of the past. These two changes can be considered movements of moral passage:

Movements to redefine behavior may eventuate in a moral passage, a
transition of the behavior from one moral status to another What is
attacked as criminal today may be seen as sick next year and fought over
as possibly legitimate by the next generation.
(Gusfield, 1967:187. See also Matza, 1969; Kitsuse, 1962; Douglas,
1970; and Becker, 1963 for further discussions of the social creation of
deviance.)

Profound metamorphoses testify to this redefinition: frequency and severity of
arrest is proportionately down from a decade ago; the stigma of a marijuana-
related arrest is no longer as personally and occupationally ostracizing; and the
fear that using grass will press the individual into close contact with hardened
criminals and cause him to adopt a deviant self-identity or take up criminal
ways has also largely passed.
The transformation in marijuanas social and legal status is not intrinsic to
its own characteristics or those of mood-altering drugs in general. Rather, it
illustrates a process of becoming socially accepted many deviant activities or
80
substances may go through. This research suggests a more generic model of
social change, a sequential development characteristic of the diffusion and
legitimation of a formerly unconventional practice. Five stages identify the
spread of such activities from small isolated outgroups, through increasing
levels of mainstream society, and finally to such sacred groups as children.
1
Often, however, as with the case of pornography, the appearance of this quasi-
sanctioned conduct among juveniles elicits moral outrage and a social backlash
designed to prevent such behavior in the sacred population, while leaving it
more open to the remainder of society.
Most treatments of pot smoking in the sociological literature have been
historically and sub-culturally specific (see Carey, 1968; Goode, 1970; Grupp,
1971; Hochman, 1972; Kaplan, 1971; and Simon and Gagnon, 1968), swiftly
dated by our rapidly changing society. Only Beckers (1953) work is
comparable to our research since it offers a generic sequential model of the
process for becoming a marijuana user.
The data in this paper show an alternate route to marijuana smoking. Two
developments necessitate a modification of Beckers conceptualization. First,
there have been many changes in norms, traditions and patterns of use since the
time he wrote. Second, the age of this new category of smokers is cause for
reformulation. Theories of child development proposed by Mead (1934),
Erikson (1968) and Piaget (1948) agree that prior to a certain age children are
unable to comprehend subtle transformations and perceptions. As we will see,
the full effects and symbolic meanings of marijuana are partially lost to them
due to their inability to differentiate between altered states of consciousness and
to connect this with the smoking experience. Yet this does not preclude their
becoming avid pot users and joining in the smoking group as accepted
members.
Socialization practices are the final concern of this research. The
existence of tinydoping both illustrates and contradicts several established
norms of traditional childrearing. Imitative behavior (see Piaget, 1962),
for instance, is integral to tinydoping since the childrens desire to copy
the actions of parents and other adults is a primary motivation. Boundary
maintenance also arises as a consideration: as soon as their offspring can
communicate, parents must instruct them in the perception of social
borders and the need for guarding group activities as secret. In contrast,
refutations of convention include the introduction of mood-altering drugs
into the sacred childhood period and, even more unusual, parents and
children get high together. This bridges, often to the point of eradication,
the inter-generational gap firmly entrenched in most societies. Thus,
although parents view their actions as normal, tinydoping must presently
be considered as deviant socialization.
Methods
Collected over the course of eighteen months, our data include observations of
two dozen youngsters between the ages of birth and 8, and a similar number of
parents, aged 21 to 32, all in middle-class households. To obtain a complete
image of this practice we talked with parents, kids and other involved observers
81
Tinydopers
(the multiperspectival approach, Douglas, 1976). Many of our conversations
with adults were taped but our discussions with the children took the form of
informal, extemporaneous dialogue, since the tape recorder distracts and
diverts their attention. Finally, our study is exploratory and suggestive; we
make no claims to all-inclusiveness in the cases or categories below.
The Kids
Big Ed: The Diaperdoper
Big Ed derives his name from his miniature size. Born three months
prematurely, now 3 years old, he resembles a toy human being. Beneath his
near-white wispy hair and toddling diapered bottom, he packs a punch of
childish energy. Big Eds mother and older siblings take care of him although he
often sees his father who lives in a neighboring California town. Laxity and
permissiveness characterize his upbringing, as he freely roams the
neighborhood under his own and other childrens supervision. Exposure to
marijuana has prevailed since birth and in the last year he advanced from
passive inhalation (smoke blown in his direction) to active puffing on joints.
Still in the learning stage, most of his power is expended blowing air into the
reefer instead of inhaling. He prefers to suck on a bong (a specially designed
waterpipe), delighting on the gurgling sound the water makes. A breast fed
baby, he will go to the bong for oral satisfaction, whether it is filled or not. He
does not actively seek joints, but Big Ed never refuses one when offered. After a
few puffs, however, he usually winds up with smoke in his eyes and tearfully
retreats to a glass of water. Actual marijuana inhalation is minimal; his size
renders it potent. Big Ed has not absorbed any social restrictions related to pot
use or any awareness of its illegality, but is still too young to make a blooper as
his speech is limited.
Stephanie: The Social Smoker
Stephie is a dreamy 4-year-old with quite good manners, calm assurance,
sweet disposition and a ladylike personality and appearance. Although her
brothers are rough and tumble, Stephanie can play with the boys or amuse
herself sedately alone or in the company of adults. Attendance at a
progressive school for the last two years has developed her natural curiosity
and intelligence. Stephanies mother and father both work, but still find
enough recreational time to raise their children with love and care and to
engage in frequent marijuana smoking. Accordingly, Stephanie has seen
grass since infancy and accepted it as a natural part of life. Unlike the
diaperdoper, she has mastered the art of inhalation and can breathe the
smoke out through her nose. Never grasping or grubbing for pot, she has
advanced from a preference for bongs or pipes and now enjoys joints when
offered. She revels in being part of a crowd of smokers and passes the reefer
immediately after each puff, never holding it for an unsociable amount of
82
time. Her treasure box contains a handful of roaches (marijuana butts) and
seeds (she delights in munching them as snacks) that she keeps as mementos
of social occasions with (adult) friends. After smoking, Stephanie becomes
more bubbly and outgoing. Dancing to records, she turns in circles as she
jogs from one foot to the other, releasing her body to the rhythm. She then
eats everything in sight and falls asleeproughly the same cycle as adults,
but faster.
When interviewed, Stephanie clearly recognized the difference between a
cigarette and a joint (both parents use tobacco), defining the effects of the latter
as good but still being unsure of what the former did and how the contents of
each varied. She also responded with some confusion about social boundaries
separating pot users from non-users, speculating that perhaps her grandmother
did smoke it but her grandfather certainly did not (neither do). In the words of
her father: She knows not to tell people about it but she just probably wouldnt
anyway.
Josh: The Self-gratifier
Everyone in the neighborhood knows Josh. Vociferous and outgoing, at age 5
he has a decidedly Dennis-the-Menace quality in both looks and personality.
Neither timid nor reserved, he boasts to total strangers of his fantastic exploits
and talents. Yet behind his bravado swagger lies a seeming insecurity and need
for acceptance, coupled with a difficulty in accepting authority, which has led
him into squabbles with peers, teachers, siblings and parents.
Joshs home shows the traditional division of labor. His mother stays home
to cook and care for the children while his father works long hours. The mother
is always calm and tolerant about her youngsters smart-alec ways, but his
escapades may provoke an explosive tirade from the father. Yet this male parent
is clearly the dominating force in Joshs life. Singling Josh out from his younger
sister and brother, the father has chosen him as his successor in the male
tradition. The parent had himself begun drinking and smoking cigarettes in his
early formative years, commencing pot use as a teenager, and now has a
favorable attitude toward the early use of stimulants which he is actively
passing on to Josh.
According to his parents, his smoking has had several beneficial effects.
Considering Josh a hyper child, they claim that it calms him down to a more
normal speed, often permitting him to engage in activities which would
otherwise be too difficult for his powers of concentration. He also appears to
become more sedate and less prone to temper tantrums, sleeping longer and
more deeply. But Joshs smoking patterns differ significantly from our last two
subjects. He does not enjoy social smoking, preferring for his father to roll him
pinners (thin joints) to smoke by himself. Unlike many other tiny-dopers, Josh
frequently refuses the offer of a joint saying, Oh that! I gave up smoking that
stuff. At age 5 he claims to have already quit and gone back several times. His
mother backs this assertion as valid; his father brushes it off as merely a ploy to
shock and gain attention. Here, the especially close male parent recognizes the
behavior as imitative and accepts it as normal. To others, however, it appears
strange and suggests surprising sophistication.
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Tinydopers
Joshs perception of social boundaries is also mature. Only a year older than
Stephanie, Josh has made some mistakes but his awareness of the necessity for
secrecy is complete; he differentiates those people with whom he may and may
not discuss the subject by the experience of actually smoking with them. He knows
individuals but cannot yet socially categorize the boundaries. Josh also realizes
the contrast between joints and cigarettes down to the marijuana and tobacco they
contain. Interestingly, he is aggressively opposed to tobacco while favoring pot
use (this may be the result of anti-tobacco cancer propaganda from kindergarten).
Kyra: The Bohemian
A worldly but curiously childlike girl is 7-year-old Kyra. Her wavy brown hair
falls to her shoulders and her sun-tanned body testifies to many hours at the
beach in winter and summer. Of average height for her age, she dresses with a
maturity beyond her years. Friendly and sociable, she has few reservations
about what she says to people. Kyra lives with her youthful mother and
whatever boyfriend her mother fancies at the moment. Their basic family unit
consists of two (mother and daughter), and they have travelled together living a
free life all along the West Coast and Hawaii. While Joshs family was male-
dominated, this is clearly female-centered, all of Kyras close relatives being
women. They are a bohemian group, generation after generation following a
hip, up-to-the-moment, unshackled lifestyle. The house is often filled with
people, but when the visitors clear out, a youthful, thrillseeking mother
remains, who raises this daughter by treating her like a sister or friend. This
demand on Kyra to behave as an adult may produce some internal strain, but
she seems to have grown accustomed to it. Placed in situations others might find
awkward, she handles them with precocity. Like her mother, she is being reared
for a life of independence and freedom.
Pot smoking is an integral part of this picture. To Kyra it is another symbol
of her adulthood; she enjoys it and wants to do it a lot. At 7 she is an
accomplished smoker; her challenge right now lies in the mastery of rolling
joints. Of our four examples, social boundaries are clearest to Kyra. Not only is
she aware of the necessary secrecy surrounding pot use, but she is able to
socially categorize types of people into marijuana smokers and straights. She
may err in her judgment occasionally, but no more so than any adult.
Stages of Development
These four and other cases suggest a continuum of reactions to marijuana that
is loosely followed by most tinydopers.
From birth to around 18 months a childs involvement is passive. Most
parents keep their infants nearby at all times and if pot is smoked the room
becomes filled with potent clouds. At this age just a little marijuana smoke can
be very powerful and these infants, the youngest diaperdopers, manifest
noticeable effects. The drug usually has a calming influence, putting the infant
into a less cranky mood and extending the depth and duration of sleep.
84
After the first one and a half years, the children are more attuned to what is
going on around them: they begin to desire participation in a monkey see,
monkey do fashion. During the second year, a fascination with paraphernalia
generally develops, as they play with it and try to figure it out. Eager to smoke
with the adults and older children, they are soon discouraged after a toke (puff)
or two. They find smoking difficult and painful (particularly to the eyes and
throat)after all it is not easy to inhale burning hot air and hold it in your
lungs.
But continual practice eventually produces results, and inhalation seems to
be achieved somewhere during the third or fourth year. This brings considerable
pride and makes the kids feel they have attained semi-adult status. Now they
can put the paraphernalia to work. Most tinydopers of this age are wild about
roachdips, itching to put their joints into them as soon as possible after lighting.
Ages 4 and 5 bring the first social sense of the nature of pot and who
should know about it. This begins as a vague idea, becoming further refined
with age and sophistication. Finally, by age 7 or 8 kids have a clear concept
of where the lines can be drawn between those who are and arent cool,
and can make these distinctions on their own. No child we interviewed,
however, could verbalize about any specific effects felt after smoking
marijuana. Ironically, although they participate in smoking and actually
manifest clear physical symptoms of the effects, tinydopers are rationally
and intellectually unaware of how the drug is acting upon them. They are
too young to notice a change in their behavior or to make the symbolic leap
and associate this transformation with having smoked pot previously. The
effects of marijuana must be socially and consensually delineated from non-
high sensations for the user to fully appreciate the often subtle perceptual
and physiological changes that have occurred. To the youngster the benefits
of pot smoking are not at all subtle: he is permitted to imitate his elders by
engaging in a social ritual they view as pleasurable and important; the
status of adulthood is partially conferred on him by allowing this act, and
his desire for acceptance is fulfilled through inclusion in his parents peer
group. This constitutes the major difference in appreciation between the
child and adult smoker.*
Parents Strategies
The youth of the 60s made some forceful statements through their actions
about how they evaluated the Establishment and the conventional American
* As the Adlers themselves state, their data is merely suggestive. Given the small number
of children they studied, the stages of development exemplified may not be
representative of children in general. As an adult construct, stages of development may
better reflect adult expectations than the range of childrens abilities. Further study is
clearly indicated, with particular concern directed to understanding childrens
perspectives in childrens terms. An assumption of clear-cut age differences seems
premature and involves the danger of forestalling investigation into similarities between
adults and children. [Waksler]
85
Tinydopers
lifestyle. While their political activism has faded, many former members of this
group still feel a strong commitment to smoking pot and attach a measure of
symbolic significance to it. When they had children the question then arose of
how to handle the drug vis--vis their offspring. The continuum of responses
they developed ranges from total openness and permissiveness to various
measures of secrecy.
Smoking Regularly Permitted
Some parents give their children marijuana whenever it is requested. They may
wait until the child reaches a certain age, but most parents in this category
started their kids on pot from infancy. These parents may be worried or
unconcerned.
WorriedKen and Deedy are moderate pot smokers, getting high a few times a
week. Both had been regular users for several years prior to having children.
When Deedy was pregnant she absolutely refused to continue her smoking
pattern.

I didnt know what effect it could have on the unborn child. I tried to read
and find out, but theres very little written on that. But in the Playboy
Advisor there was an article: they said we advise you to stay away from all
drugs when youre pregnant. That was sort of my proof. I figured they
dont bullshit about these types of things. I sort of said now at least
somebody stands behind me because people were saying, You can get
high, its not going to hurt the baby.

This abstinence satisfied them and once the child was born they resumed getting
high as before. Frequently smoking in the same room as the baby, they began to
worry about the possible harmful effects this exposure might have on his physical,
psychological and mental development. After some dicussion, they consulted
the family pediatrician, a prominent doctor in the city.

I was really embarrassed, but I said, Doctor, we get high, we smoke pot,
and sometimes the kids in the room. If hes in the room can this hurt him?
I dont want him to be mentally retarded. He said, Dont worry about it,
theyre going to be legalizing it any day nowthis was three years ago
its harmless and a great sedative.*
* The contrast between this statement by a medical doctor and present-day claims of the
dangers of all drug use demonstrate a dramatic change in what is taken to be knowledge.
Rather than viewing those in the past as wrong and we in the present as right, it is more
useful sociologically to recognize that what is known changes in time. There is a
tendency to view any present answer as the definitive one but experience suggests that it
too will be superseded. [Waksler]
86
This reassured them on two counts: they no longer were fearful in their own
minds, and they had a legitimate answer when questioned by their friends.
2
Ken and Deedy were particularly sensitive about peer reactions:

Some people say, You let your children get high?! They really react with
disgust. Or theyll say, Oh you let your kids get high, and then they kind
of look at you like, Thats neat, I think. And its just nice to be able to
back it up.

Ken and Deedy were further nonplussed about the problem of teaching their
children boundary maintenance. Recognizing the need to prevent their
offspring from saying things to the wrong people, they were unsure how to
approach this subject properly.

How can you tell a kid, how can you go up to him and say, Well you want
to get high, but dont tell anybody youre doing it? You cant. We didnt
really know how to tell them. You dont want to bring the attention, you
dont want to tell your children not to say anything about it because thats
a sure way to get them to do it. We just never said anything about it.

They hope this philosophy of openness and permissiveness will forestall the
need to limit their childrens marijuana consumption. Limits, for them,
resemble prohibitions and interdictions against discussing grass: they make
transgressions attractive. Both parents believe strongly in presenting
marijuana as an everyday occurrence, definitely not as an undercover affair.
When asked how they thought this upbringing might affect their kids,
Deedy offered a fearful but doubtful speculation that her children might one
day reject the drug.

I dont imagine theyd try to abuse it. Maybe they wont even smoke pot
when they get older. Thats a big possibility. I doubt it, but hopefully they
wont be that way. Theyve got potheads for parents.

UnconcernedAlan and Anna make use of a variety of stimulantspot,
alcohol, cocaineto enrich their lives. Considered heavy users, they consume
marijuana and alcohol daily. Alan became acquainted with drugs, particularly
alcohol, at a very early age and Anna first tried them in her teens. When they
decided to have children the question of whether they would permit the
youngsters to partake in their mood-altering experiences never arose. Anna
didnt curtail her drug intake during pregnancy; her offspring were conceived,
formed and weaned on this steady diet. When queried about their motivations,
Alan volunteered:

What the hell! It grows in the ground, its a weed. I cant see anything
wrong with doing anything, inducing any part of it into your body any
way that you possibly could eat it, smoke it, intravenously, or whatever,
that it would ever harm you because it grows in the ground. Its a natural
thing. Its one of Gods treats.

87
Tinydopers
All of their children have been surrounded by marijuanas aromatic vapor
since the day they returned from the hospital. Alan and Anna were pleased with
the effect pot had on their infants; the relaxed, sleepy and happy qualities
achieved after inhaling pot smoke made child-rearing an easier task. As the little
ones grew older, they naturally wanted to share in their parents activities. Alan
viewed this as the childrens desire to imitate rather than true enjoyment of any
effects:

Emily used to drink Jack Daniels straight and like it. I dont think it was
taste, I think it was more of an acceptance thing because thats what I was
drinking. She was also puffing on joints at six months.

This mimicking, coupled with a craving for acceptance, although recognized by
Alan in his kids, was not repeated in his own feelings toward friends or
relatives. At no time during the course of our interview or acquaintance did he
show any concern with what others thought of his behavior; rather, his
convictions dominated, and his wife passively followed his lead.
In contrast to the last couple, Alan was not reluctant to address the problem
of boundary maintenance. A situation arose when Emily was 3, where she was
forced to learn rapidly:

One time we were stopped by the police while driving drunk. I said to
Emilywe havent been smoking marijuana. We all acted quiet and Emily
realized there was something going on and she delved into it. I explained
that some people are stupid and theyll harm you very badly if you smoke
marijuana. To this day I havent heard her mention it to anyone she hasnt
smoked with.

As each new child came along, Alan saw to it that they learned the essential
facts of life.
Neither Alan nor Anna saw any moral distinction between marijuana
smoking and other, more accepted pastimes. They heartily endorsed marijuana
as something to indulge in like tobacco, alcohol, sex, breathing or anything else
that brings pleasure to the senses. Alan and Anna hope their children will
continue to smoke grass in their later lives. It has had beneficial effects for them
and they believe it can do the same for their kids:

I smoked marijuana for a long time, stopped, and developed two ulcers;
and smoked again and the two ulcers went away. It has great medicinal
value.
Smoking Occasionally Permitted
In contrast to uninterrupted permissiveness, other parents restrict marijuana
use among their children to specific occasions. A plethora of reasons and
rationalizations lie behind this behavior, some openly avowed by parents and
others not. Several people believe it is okay to let the kids get high as long as it
88
isnt done too often. Many other people do not have any carefully thought-out
notion of what they want, tending to make spur-of-the-moment decisions. As a
result, they allow occasional but largely undefined smoking in a sporadic and
irregular manner. Particular reasons for this inconsistency can be illustrated by
three examples from our research:

1 Conflicts between parents can confuse the situation. While Stella had
always planned to bring her children up with pot, Burt did not like the
idea. Consequently, the household rule on this matter varied according
to the unpredictable moods of the adults and which parent was in the
house.
2 Mike and Gwen had trouble making up their minds. At one time they
thought it probably couldnt harm the child, only to decide the next
day they shouldnt take chances and rescind that decision.
3 Lois and David didnt waver hourly but had changing ideas over time.
At first they were against it, but then met a group of friends who liked
to party and approved of tiny do ping. After a few years they moved to
a new neighborhood and changed their lifestyle, again prohibiting pot
smoking for the kids.

These are just a few of the many situations in which parents allow children an
occasional opportunity to smoke grass. They use various criteria to decide
when those permissible instances ought to be, most families subscribing to
several of the following patterns:
RewardThe child receives pot as a bonus for good behavior in the past,
present or future. This may serve as an incentive: If youre a good boy today,
Johnny, I may let you smoke with us tonight, or to celebrate an achievement
already completed like going potty or reciting the alphabet.
GuiltMarijuana can be another way of compensating children for what
they arent getting. Historically, parents have tried to buy their kids off or
make themselves loved through gifts of money or toys but pot can also be
suitable here. This is utilized both by couples with busy schedules who
dont have time for the children (Were going out again tonight so well
give you this special treat to make it up to you) and by separated parents
who are trying to compete with the former spouse for the childs love (I
know Mommy doesnt let you do this but you can do special things when
youre with me).
CutenessTo please themselves parents may occasionally let the child
smoke pot because its cute. Younger children look especially funny because
they cannot inhale, yet in their eagerness to be like Mommy and Daddy
they make a hilarious effort and still have a good time themselves. Often
this will originate as amusement for the parents and then spread to include
cuteness in front of friends. Carrying this trend further, friends may roll
joints for the little ones or turn them on when the parents are away. This
still precludes regular use.
89
Tinydopers
PurposiveGiving marijuana to kids often carries a specific anticipated goal
for the parents. They know effects of pot are occasionally desired and actively
sought. They may want to calm the child down because of the necessities of a
special setting or company. Sleep is another pursued end, as in Thank you for
taking Billy for the night; if he gives you any trouble just let him smoke this and
hell go right to bed. They may also give it to the child medicinally. Users
believe marijuana soothes the upset stomach and alleviates the symptoms of the
common cold better than any other drug. As a mood elevator, many parents
have given pot to alleviate the crankiness young children develop from a
general illness, specific pain or injury. One couple used it experimentally as a
treatment for hyperactivity (see Josh).
Abstention
Our last category of marijuana smoking parents contains those who do not
permit their children any direct involvement with illegal drugs. This leaves
several possible ways to treat the topic of the adults own involvement with
drugs and how open they are about it. Do they let the kids know they smoke
pot? Moreover, do they do it in the childrens presence?
OvertThe great majority of our subjects openly smoked in front of their
children, defining marijuana as an accepted and natural pastime. Even parents
who withhold it from their young children hope that the kids will someday
grow up to be like themselves. Thus, they smoke pot overtly. These marijuana
smokers are divided on the use of other drugs, such as pills and cocaine:

a. permissiveOne group considers it acceptable to use any drug in front of
the children. Either they believe in what they are doing and consider it right for
the kids to observe their actions, or they dont worry about it and just do it.
b. pragmaticA larger, practically oriented group differentiated between
smokable drugs (pot and hashish) and the others (cocaine and pills), finding it
acceptable to let/children view consumption of the former group, but not the
latter. Rationales varied for this, ranging from safety to morality:

Well, we have smoked hashish around them but we absolutely never ever
do coke in front of them because its a white powder and if they saw us
snorting a white powder there goes the drain cleaner, there goes the baby
powder. Anything white, theyll try it; and that goes for pills too. The only
thing they have free rein of is popping vitamins.
Fred expressed his concern over problems this might engender in the
preservation of his childrens moral fibre:

If he sees me snorting coke, how is he going to differentiate that from
heroin? He gets all of this anti-drug education from school and they tell
him that heroin is bad. How can I explain to him that doing coke is okay
90
and its fun and doesnt hurt you but heroin is something else, so different
and bad? How could I teach him right from wrong?

c. capriciousA third group is irregular in its handling of multiple drug
viewing and their offspring. Jon and Linda, for instance, claim that they dont
mind smoking before their child but absolutely wont permit other drugs to be
used in his presence. Yet in fact they often use almost any intoxicant in front of
him, depending on their mood and how high they have already become.

In our observations we have never seen any parent give a child in the tinydoper
range any kind of illegal drug other than marijuana and, extremely rarely,
hashish. Moreover, the treatment of pot has been above all direct and open:
even those parents who dont permit their children to join have rejected the
clandestine secrecy of the behind-closed-doors approach. Ironically, however,
they must often adopt this strategy toward the outside world; those parents
who let it be known that they permit tinydoping frequently take on an extra
social and legal stigma. Their motivation for doing so stems from a desire to
avoid having the children view pot and their smoking it as evil or unnatural.
Thus, to de-stigmatize marijuana they stigmatize themselves in the face of
society.
Conclusions
Tinydoping, with its combined aspects of understandably innovative social
development and surprising challenges to convention, is a fruitful subject for
sociological analysis. A review of historical and cultural forces leading to the
present offers insight into how and why this phenomenon came to arise.
Essentially, we are witnessing the moral passage of marijuana, its
transformation from an isolated and taboo drug surrounded by connotations of
fear and danger, into an increasingly accepted form of social relaxation, similar
to alcohol. * The continuing destigmatization of pot fosters an atmosphere in
which parents are willing to let their children smoke.
Marijuanas social transition is not an isolated occurrence, however. Many
formerly deviant activities have gradually become accepted forms of
behavior. Table 7.1 presents a general model of social change which outlines
the sequential development and spread of a conduct undergoing
legitimization.
* Now, in the 1990s, we are witnessing another moral passage of marijuana with its
transformation back into an isolated and taboo drug surrounded by connotations of
fear and danger. There is no reason to believe that this transformation will be the last.
Although the Adlers refer in what follows to five stages in the legitimization of
marijuana and take the fifth stage to be the final one, present circumstances suggest the
need to identify further stages to account for the movement towards increasing
delegitimization. [Waksler]
91
Tinydopers
Particular behaviors which first occur only among relatively small and
stigmatized outgroups are frequently picked up by ingroup deviants who
identify with the stigmatized outgroup. In an attempt to be cool and avant
garde, larger clusters of ingroup members adopt this deviant practice, often for
the sake of non-conformity as well as its own merits. By this time the deviant
activity is gaining exposure as well as momentum and may spread to normal
ingroup members. The final step is its eventual introduction to sacred groups in
the society, such as children.
Beckers (1953) research and theory are pertinent to historical stages I
and II. More recently, Carey (1968) and Goode (1970) have depicted stage
III. To date, sociologists have not described stage IV and we are the first to
portray stage V.
The general value of this model can be further illustrated by showing its
application to another deviant activity which has followed a similar
progression: pornography. Initially a highly stigmatized practice engaged in by
people largely hidden from public view, it slowly became incorporated into a
wider cross-section of the population. With the advent of Playboy, mainstream
media entered the scene, resulting in the present proliferation of sexually-
oriented magazines and tabloids. Recently, however, this practice passed into
stage V; a violent societal reaction ensued, with moralist groups crusading to
hold the sacred period of childhood free from such deviant intrusions.
Tinydoping has not become broadly publicly recognized but, as with
pornography, the widespread (collective) softening of attitudes has not
extended to youngsters. Rather, a backlash effect stemming from conventional
morality condemns such instrusions and violations of childhood as repulsive.
Thus, the spread of deviance to Group V prompts social revulsion and renewed
effort to ban the behavior by children while allowing it to adults.
These data also recommend a re-examination of sociological theories about
marijuana use. Beckers (1953) theory is in some ways timeless, illuminating a
model of the actor which encompasses a dynamic processual development. It
proposes an initiation process that precedes bona fide membership in a pot
smoking milieu. Minimally, this includes: learning the proper techniques to
ensure adequate consumption; perception of the drugs unique effects;
association of these effects with the smoking experience, and the
Table 7. 1 Sequential model of social change: the diffusion and legitimization of marijuana
92
conceptualization of these effects as pleasurable. Symbolic meaning is crucial to
this schema: through a sequence of social experiences the individual
continually reformulates his attitudes, eventually learning to view marijuana
smoking as desirable. The formation of this conception is the key to
understanding the motivations and actions of users.
Accepting this mode for the adult initiate, the present research has explored
an historically novel group (tinydopers), describing a new route to becoming a
marijuana user taken by these children. As has been shown, tinydopers are
unable to recognize the psychological and physiological effects of pot or to
connect them with having smoked. This effectively precludes their following
Beckers model which accords full user status to the individual only after he has
successfully perceived the effects of the drug and marked them as pleasurable.
Our research into child perception relied mostly on observation and inference
since, as Piaget (1948) noted, it is nearly impossible to discover this from
children; the conceptual categories are too sophisticated for their grasp. That
the marijuana affects them is certain: giddy, they laugh, dance and run to the
refrigerator, talking excitedly and happily until they suddenly fall asleep. But
through observations and conversations before, during and after the
intoxicated periods, tinydopers were found to be unaware of any changes in
themselves.*
Their incomplete development, perceptually, cognitively and interactionally,
is the cause of this ignorance. According to the socialization theories of Mead
(1934), Erikson (1968), and Piaget (1948), children of 8 and under are still
psychologically forming, gradually learning to function. Piaget particularly
notes definitive cognitive stages, asserting that conservation, transformation
and classification are all too advanced for the tinydoper age bracket. According
to Mead (see also Adler and Adler, 1979), the essence lies in their lack of mature
selves, without which they cannot fully act and interact competently.** The
ages 89 seem to be a decisive turning point as youngsters change in internal
psychological composition and become capable of reflecting on themselves,
both through their own eyes and those of the other. (Mead argues that this is
possible only after the child has completed the play, game and generalized other
stages and can competently engage in roletaking.) Hence, before that time they
cannot genuinely recognize their normal selves or differentiate them from their
high selves. Without this perception, the effects of marijuana are held to those
created by the parents, who frame the experience with their own intentional
and unintentional definitions of the situation. Thus, tinydopers become
marijuana users almost unconsciously, based on a decision made by others.
* Readers are advised to read critically the statements concerning childrens inabilities
that appear in this paragraph and the next, keeping in mind the ideas presented in
Chapters 2 through 5. The authors cited here by the Adlers adopt the adult perspective
criticized in Part I and thus have in many ways assumed childrens abilities and
inabilities rather than subjecting them to empirical study. Further empirical research
from childrens perspectives seems indicated before it is possible to assert with
confidence what young children do and do not experience. (Waksler)
** See in particular Mackays earlier discussion of interpretive competence (in Chapter
3) for a critique of this claim. (Waksler)
93
Tinydopers
Moreover, the social meanings they associate with its use are very different than
those experienced by adult initiates.
How does this new practice correspond to conventional modes of child-
rearing? One traditional procedure we see re-affirmed is imitative behavior
(see Piaget, 1962), through which the child learns and matures by copying
the actions of significant adult models. Several of the illustrative cases
chosen show particularly how directly the youngsters are influenced by their
desire to behave and be like older family members and friends. They have
two aspirations: wanting to be accorded quasi-adult status and longing for
acceptance as members of the social group. Parents have corresponding and
natural positive feelings about inculcating meaningful beliefs and values into
their offspring. Teaching boundary maintenance is also a necessary adjunct
to allowing tinydoping. Marijuanas continued illegality and social
unacceptability for juveniles necessitates parents ensuring that information
about pot smoking is neither intentionally nor accidentally revealed by
youngsters. Children must learn early to differentiate between members of
various social groups and to judge who are and are not appropriate to be
told. This is difficult because it involves mixing positive and negative
connotations of the drug in a complex manner. Valuable parallels for this
contradictory socialization can be found in child use of alcohol and
tobacco, as well as to families of persecuted religious groups (i.e. Marrano
Jews in fifteenth century Spain, covert Jews in Nazi Germany and possibly
Mormons in the nineteenth century). Members of these enclaves believed
that what they were teaching their offspring was fundamentally honorable,
but still had to communicate to the younger generation their social
ostracization and the need to maintain some barriers of secrecy.
Juxtaposed to those aspects which reproduce regular features of socialization
are the contradictory procedures. One such departure is the introduction of
mood-altering intoxicants into the sacred childhood period. Tinydoping violates
the barriers created by most societies to reserve various types of responsibilities,
dangers and special pleasures (such as drugs and sex) for adults only. Yet perhaps
the most unusual and unprecedented facet of tiny-doping socialization observed
is the inter-generational bridging that occurs between parent and child. By
introducing youngsters into the adult social group and having them participate
as peers, parents permit generational boundaries to become extremely vague,
often to the point of nonexistence. Several cases show how children have come
to look at parents and other adults as friends. This embodies extreme variance
from cultures and situations where parents love and treasure their children yet
still treat them unequally.
How then can tinydoping be compared to traditional childrearing practices
and habits? Existing indicators suggest both similarity and divergence. The
parents in this study consider marijuana a substance they overwhelmingly feel
comfortable with, regard as something natural (i.e. Alan and Anna), and
would like their progeny to be exposed to in a favorable light. To them,
tinydoping represents a form of normal socialization within the context of
their subcultural value system. From the greater societys perspective, however,
the illegality of the behavior, aberration from conventional child-rearing
norms and uncertain implications for futurity combine to define tinydoping as
deviant socialization.
94
The authors wish to thank Fred Davis, Murray Davis, Jack Douglas,
Virginia Forrest and Richard Travisano for various comments and inspirations
on earlier drafts of this paper.
Notes
1 The period of childhood has traditionally been a special time in which developing
adults were given special treatment to ensure their growing up to be capable and
responsible members of society. Throughout history and in most cultures children
have been kept apart from adults and sheltered in protective isolation from certain
knowledge and practices (see Aries, 1965).
2 Particularly relevant to these justification is Lyman and Scotts (1968) analysis of
accounts, as statements made to relieve one of culpability. Specifically, they can be
seen as denial of injury (Sykes and Matza, 1957) as they assert the innocuousness
of giving marijuana to their child. An excuse is further employed, scapegoating the
doctor as the one really responsible for this aberration. Also, the appeal to science
has been made.
95

Chapter 8

Dancing When the Music is Over:
A Study of Deviance inaKindergarten
Classroom
Commentary
Although the purpose of this article is simply to describe certain kinds of
activities in a kindergarten classroom, it suggests the useful practical
information that can emerge from sociological research. Teachers, for example,
might find it very usefulthough not necessarily pleasantto have such a
study done of their own classrooms, for in this way they might be able to
identify many of the taken-for-granted assumptions that underlie their behavior
and see their activities in the stark terms in which research presents them. Some
behavior might be reconsidered, other kinds discontinued, yet other kinds
reaffirmed; results of such a study would provide a particularly fruitful basis for
making such choices.
As in the foregoing article by the Adlers, readers may find the issue of right/
wrong and good/bad arising and will find that that issue is not addressed.
Rather, the findings are presented in a way that allows readers with different
moral positions to gain knowledge. Is the teacher described here a good
teacher? Answers will differ according to different moral positions, different
conceptions of the goal of teaching, whether or not one has had experience
teaching, and so forth. The article itself does not provide an answer but does
present evidence for those who wish to develop such an answer.
Seldom if ever, in its detailed daily manifestations, does behavior fit the
public image that exists of it. Whether that image is positive or negative,
elements of the opposite moral cast are also routinely present. Thus good
teachers can be judged as doing bad things, bad teachers as doing good things.
Practical activities are constructed as ways of acting in very specific situations
From Patricia and Peter Adler, Eds, Sociological Studies of Child Development, Vol. 2.
Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1987. Reprinted by permission of JAI Press Inc. A
version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the American Sociological
Association, New York City, August, 1986.
96
while public images are designed to present a view for public consumption.
Detailed scrutiny of everyday behavior almost always reveals elements that
even those engaged in the behavior might want to disclaim or at least explain as
being undesirable but required by the situation. Readers might find it
instructive to consider what would be revealed by a detailed examination of
their own daily activitieswork habits, housekeeping, study methods, etc.
The rules identified in this articleand note that they are adults rules, not
childrensare for the most part taken-for-granted; when they are set forth
formally they may sound a trifle odd. Their oddness, however, does not
disqualify them as rules. As long as they set forth guidelines for behavior and as
long as breaking them is in some sense viewed as problematic, they are indeed
rules. Identification of such rules is an important method for understanding the
taken-for-granted dimension of everyday social behavior.
F.C.W.
Introduction
This paper addresses the issue of children as topics of sociological analysis.
In an earlier article (see Waksler, 1986, [in this volume, Chapter 5]) I have
argued that although there have been many sociological studies of children
qua chidlren, these studies almost exclusively focus on the childrenness of
children; few consider children as ordinary social beings, as members of the
social world, as social actors. Clearly there are ways in which children and
adults differ; my argument is simply that there are also respects in which
they are alike. That children are labeled children obviously has
implications for them and for others in everyday life, but I see that label as
a social one rather than as one with any particular ontological primacy. I
want to suspend the notion of children and explore the sociological
implications of so doing
I claim that it is possible to apply to children sociological concepts that have
been applied almost exclusively to adults. If children are seen as mere social
members, rather than as special and as excused from ordinary sociological
analysis because they are children, then the concepts that sociologists have
developed and used in studying adults are applicable to children as well.
In this paper I will make use of the adult notion of deviance, particularly as it
has been developed by Becker (1963). In the extensive sociological literature on
deviance, that term is seldom applied to children and even less often applied to
children who have not been judged mentally ill, abused, neglected, or those in
some other social category that labels them different. Perhaps the term
deviance is seen as too harsh to apply to children; perhaps the notion of
intentionality still hangs over the notion of deviance, and children are seen as
too young to mean to be deviant. Or perhaps the term seems too strong for the
kinds of activities that I have called deviance in this paper. In what follows I will
argue and demonstrate that deviance can be fruitfully used as a concept to make
sense out of childrens behavior and out of adults behavior towards children
and that in the process, the notion of deviance is enriched.
97
Dancing When the Music is Over
Methodology
The data for this study was gathered, analyzed, and originally written in
1965. I then set the paper aside. When a few years ago I became interested
in children as a topic for sociological analysis, I unearthed the paper and
was struck by the implications I saw in it. In what follows I will present the
data and analysis in essentially the same form in which they appeared in my
initial paper, foregoing the often felt but seldom acknowledged temptation
to change one or both in the service of new ideas. The introductory
materials and conclusion have been newly written to point out the ideas I
now see in this data.
The school I studied was selected for me by the local school department
when I requested permission to carry out observations; their criteria for
selection were not disclosed to me. I was granted permission subject to the
following conditions: I could not do a critique of the school; I could not take up
the teachers time; I could observe only for eight weeks (I was later granted a
three week extension), once a week, two hours at a time; and I would not
interfere with the classes. I observed during morning sessionsten weeks in
Kindergarten A and one week in Kindergarten B. I arrived during the free play
period and left with the children.
The role of non-participant observer existed prior to my arrival, filled
customarily by students from local teachers colleges. On the first day of my
observations, the teacher put a chair beside her desk for me and I sat in this
position thereafter, except when I was following activities that took place
elsewhere. The teacher asked no further explanation from me once she was told
that I was an observer. No explanation of my presence was given to the children
while I was there. Few children initiated conversation with me. When the
teacher left the room, the children initially seemed to be curious about what I
might do in response to their behavior but my failure to do anything seemed to
establish my role as non-participant. Throughout my observations I took notes
frequently, fully, and openly.
Most of my findings derive from my observations though some of my
material comes from informal conversations with the teacher. During certain of
the class activities the teacher was not actively involved with the children; if she
was not occupied with preparing other activities, she would often talk casually
with me. She answered the questions I asked about the children and volunteered
information about their behavior, their families, and her attitudes towards
them. During recess the teacher usually talked to the first grade teacher, who
was outside at the same time, and I was generally included in the conversation
as a listener. This conversation was often about the children. I occasionally
asked questions during this time.
When I began this study, my interest was in observing children in
kindergarten simply to see what I could see. I gathered varied kinds of data but
quite early in the study became interested in those childrens activities towards
which teachers seemed to show disapproval. I focused my observations on such
activities, working towards an identification of disapproved activities (those
that were in some sense punished) and the rules, both explicit and implicit, that
existed and were broken.
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I worked with a rather diffuse notion of deviance. Rather than asking
teachers what their rules were, I was interested in inferring these rules from
instances of their violation. My particular interest in taken-for-granted rules
made this course seem advisable since it seemed unlikely that teachers would be
able to state those rules, of which they were not aware and would be unwilling
to state those that, when articulated, seemed in some sense objectionable.
Instead of working from rule to violation to punishment, I worked in the
opposite direction and was able to identify a number of rules and a number of
instances of rule-use that have implications for the sociological notion of
deviance.
Theoretical Aspects of Deviance
The application of notions of deviance to children has been impeded by the
assumption that adults rules for children are in some sense necessarily right or
at least righter than those created by children and that children need rules in
general and some specific set of rules in particular. From this point of view,
childrens rule breaking has been viewed as distinct from considerations of
deviance, since the wide variety and range of reasons that adults can provide for
their rule-breaking is denied children, whose reasons are routinely dismissed as
wrong simply because they are childrens reasons.
For the purposes of the following discussion I will define deviance as any
thought, feeling, or action that members of a social group judge to be a
violation of their values or rules (Douglas and Waksler, 1982:10). This
definition was developed to be as inclusive as possible of the range of activities
that get labeled deviant. Although it has, to my knowledge, been applied only
to adults, I see it as suitable for understanding the deviance of children.
Kindergarten deviance, during the course of my study, clearly emerged as
that which the kindergarten teacher judged to be a violation of values or rules.
Whose values or rules? Tentatively I will suggest three different sources of rules:
1) societal/cultural rules that the teacher imparted as part of preparing children
for life in broader society; 2) classroom rules that the teacher viewed as useful
for the conduct of classroom behavior; and 3) the teachers own personal or
subcultural rules that were taken for granted and simply transmitted as the
way to do things. Problems arise in distinguishing among these three sources of
rules in situ since two or three sources may combine in a rule and since the first
and second source, but not the third, are commonly accepted as legitimate
reasons to give for rules, regardless of the proximate reason for their
invocation.
Less clear in my data was kindergarteners labeling one another deviant,
though where I do have data in this regard, I have included it. Further research
would be required to distinguish between childrens use of the teachers rules
and childrens creation and use of their own rules.
I assume, on the readers part, a certain familiarity with Beckers (1963)
notion of deviance and will here, as a reminder, quote just a few of his ideas
ones that I found of particular significance in understanding kindergarten
deviance:
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the questions of what rules are to be enforced, what behavior regarded
as deviant, and which people labeled as outsiders must also be regarded
as political (p. 7);
whether a given act is deviant or not depends in part on the nature of
the act (that is, whether or not it violates some rule) and in part on
what other people do about it (p. 14);
deviance is not a quality that lies in behavior itself but in the interaction
between the person who commits an act and those who respond to it
(p. 14);
Who can, in fact, force others to accept their rules and what are the
causes of their success? This is, of course, a question of political and
economic power (p. 17).

All of these aspects of deviance inform my understanding of kindergarten
deviance.
In the data that follows, I will describe a variety of ways that adults label
children. What underlies this process, though it is a taken-for-granted process
embedded in everyday life and seldom, if ever, articulated, is that the term
children is itself a label, with all the attendant consequences of any label. The
common-sense notion that adults discover in children characteristics that are
there customarily obscures this labeling process. Analysis of the process of
labeling some social actors children awaits future study. Here my concern is
with what might be called secondary labeling, for labeling children deviant
would seem, at least on some occasions, to presuppose their primary labeling as
children. What gets labeled as deviant behavior of children appears from my
data to be at least in some respects different from what constitutes deviant
behavior in adults. Am I deviant if I spill my milk? Set my chair crooked in
relation to others? Not, it would seem, in the same way as when I was a child.
Getting labeled child seems to have consequences for which of ones actions
get labeled deviant.
The Setting
The public school I studied was located in a large urban area; students were
drawn from the local community. At the time of my study (1965), the school
was about ten years old and referred to by school personnel as new. In the
school were two kindergarten classrooms, each presided over by a teacher. Four
classes a day were offered: two in the morning from 8:30 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. for
the younger kindergarteners (those who would be five years old by 1 April of
the coming year) and two from 11:45 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. for the older
kindergarteners. The schedule of morning activities provided to me by the
Kindergarten A teacher, and followed pretty closely when I observed, was as
follows:
8:159:00 Free play
9:009:30 Singing and/or listening to records
9:3010:00 Individual projects
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10:0010:30 Kindergarten A goes to recess;
Kindergarten B continues with projects and has milk
break
10:3011:00 Kindergarten B goes to recess;
Kindergarten A resumes projects and has milk break
11:0011:15 Stories and/or games
11:15 Children leave
There were twenty-seven children in Kindergarten As morning program and
initially twenty-five in Kindergarten Bs but this latter number changed to
twenty-eight during the course of my study.
A Caveat
In what follows, readers might be tempted to criticize the teachers activities,
policies, etc. I want to emphasize that the kind of close observation in which I
engaged necessarily brings to light those features of everyday activity which are
commonly concealed, ignored, covered up, explained away, etc. If every piece
of my everyday life were brought forth for public scrutiny, behaviors would be
disclosed that I myself might well deny or want to deny. Explication of the
taken-for-granted routinely brings to light that which might well have been
quite appropriately left at the taken-for-granted level for the purposes of
conducting everyday life. The teacher I present here is not a storybook teacher
but rather a real teacher engaging in the multiplicity of actions characteristic of
living in the world of everyday life. To call the teacher either good or bad is to
obscure the nature of her actions as actions.
Procedure
In collecting data about deviance, I began by looking for instances of discipline,
i.e. actions that in an everyday-life mode I identified as indicating that children,
according to someone, were doing something wrong. I focused initially on the
teacher as disciplinarian, but also collected some data on children engaging in
disciplinary activities. I identified varieties of deviance by drawing inferences
from the data; none of my informants articulated any of these methods of
discipline. Having identified varieties of discipline, I observed the behaviors to
which they were applied, primarily by the teacher since she was the most actively
involved in the process, and I articulated the taken-for-granted rules that seemed
to have been violated. I thus moved from discipline to rule-breaking to rule
through an inferential process. The rules I was able to articulate through this
process turned out to be rather complex and sophisticated, especially when they
were applied to kindergarteners whose knowledge was, in the everyday life view
of adults, neither complex nor sophisticated. Having identified rules, I then
returned to observations of discipline and found that rule-breaking did not
inevitably bring discipline. Finally, I developed a set of criteria that seemed to
operate in the enforcement of rules.
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Varieties of Discipline
I classified the discipline I observed into two types: verbal and physical. Verbal
discipline involved only words. Physical discipline involved some form of
control of or access to the childs body. I further subdivided these two types as
follows:
Verbal discipline
command telling a child not to do what that child is doing.
statement describing what the child is doing or what people in
general do, e.g. Youre being awfully noisy this morning,
When someone spills his milk, he cleans it up.
sarcasm insulting the child, e.g. For someone as bright as you
are, you sure are sloppy, Poor Ann doesnt want to
play the game. Isnt that a shame? (the latter said in a
mocking tone).
threat threatening either deprivation or the use of outside
authorities such as parents or teacher.
Physical discipline
deprivation preventing the childs joining activities with the rest of
the class, e.g. having a child sit at a table rather than
with the rest of the class during a story, sending a
child inside during recess.
mild physical punishment physically constraining or coercing the
child, e.g. pulling the child by the arm, holding the
childs chin while giving commands, statements, etc.
I observed the teacher using all of these methods and I used these instances
as indicators that some rule had been broken. (After I had identified the
rules, I was able to observe instances where those rules were broken and
were not met with any noticeable method of discipline, a point to which I
will return in a later section.) Of these methods of discipline, perhaps the
clearest was the command, for it said what it meant and as long as the
referent was clear (i.e. what of the many things one is doing one is supposed
to stop), the childs expected response was relatively unambiguous. As
Mackay (1974) would certainly point out, all the other modes of discipline
required extensive knowledge and work on the part of the child if the
intention of the discipliner was to become clear. That a descriptive statement
can be a punishment, that a public announcement of ones action can be
heard as a command to desist, that in a statement of what people in general
do can be heard a criticism of ones own and differing action, implies
sophisticated hearers, ones who are able to make complex inferences and
thereby modify their action. Sarcasm seems even more complex and subtle,
for it involves hearing a statement not only as a description of ones self but
as an identification of something that one can and ought to change. It
requires that one hear not literally but indeed the opposite of what one
hears. Threats, when they occur alone rather than combined with
commands, are similarly subtle, for they require one to assess all of ones
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behavior in order to identify that behavior which is at issue. Ill tell your
mother is mute as to what the mother is to be told. Similarly, physical
discipline did not necessarily embody that which it disciplined. In the
absence of commands (and even in the presence of commands of the form
Stop that,), children were likely to be aware that a rule had been broken
but certainly did not necessarily know what rule had been broken.
At the time of my observations I was able to make common-sense inferences
about the rules being violatedthough my inferences may not have matched
those the teacher would makebut it is significant that a task I found complex
and ambiguous was assumed to be able to be carried out by kindergarteners in
the course of their ongoing activities and without instruction. Furthermore,
there is ample evidence that the children I observed indeed carried out this task
in ways that satisfied the teacher.
Although my data on children disciplining other children is scant, I did see
instances of children using disciplinary procedures. It would seem that all the
teachers methods were theoretically available to childrenand fuller
observations might well disclose all of them; I only observed commands and
mild physical punishment, the latter involving pushing and pulling, as well as
a particular form of threats, namely, telling the teacher. I observed instances of
this threat as well as its realization, i.e. a child telling the teacher. The
realization, however, I see not as a form of discipline but as a step between two
types of discipline: threat and whatever disciplinary method the teacher chose
to use. Thus a child might as a form of discipline say to another child, Give me
back the ball or Ill tell the teacher. One response to this might be a return of the
ball (and I would identify a taken-for-granted rule about possession of balls).
To actually tell the teacher, however, was an ambiguous and even risky step
to take, and thus not necessarily a form of discipline in and of itself. In actual
observed practice, telling the teacher could, and did, bring any one of four
responses. The teacher might:

1 deal with the rule-breaker and ignore the teller;
2 deal with the rule-breaker and discipline the teller;
3 ignore the rule-breaker and discipline the teller;
4 ignore the rule-breaker and ignore the teller.

Children who chose this course of action could not with any accuracy predict
the results of the telling and might, instead of bringing punishment on the head
of another, call it down on their own.
I observed childrens use of discipline most frequently during game playing.
The teacher gave tacit approval to this use and seldom intervened though she
too engaged in disciplinary activities related to games.
On the basis of observed instances of discipline, I inferred the existence of a
variety of taken-for-granted rules, to which I turn now.
Taken-for-granted Rules
The rules presented in this section should be considered in the light of my earlier
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comments concerning rules that apply particularly to children and rules that
apply to people in general. Some of the rules which follow can be considered in
the light of social rules for social members in general, while others seem
particularly child-oriented.
Rule 1: Do not talk at inappropriate times. Although I did not hear any
articulation of the notion of inappropriate, I observed a number of instances
where children were disciplined for talking. I found this an ambiguous category
and the data suggests the children did too. I saw children disciplined for
infractions of this rule more than for any other. My observations suggest that
this rule was violated if any one of the following criteria were met:

a. if the childs voice was audible above the sound of the group as a
whole;
b. if the child talked frequently during the course of a class;
c. if the child talked when the teacher was talking or was preparing to
talk;
d. if the childs talking seemed to be causing slow behavior or poor work.

Understanding these criteria requires rather sophisticated discriminations on
the part of those attempting to follow them. The first criterion presupposes
an awareness of and attention to the volume of ones own voice in relation
to those of others. The second calls for a kind of tally-keeping of ones
occasions of talking and an assessment of what is enough and what too
much. The third requires the subtle perception of the state preparing to talk.
The fourth necessitates understanding a causal relationship between talk
and action, a relation that may well differ among people.
Certainly this rule can be viewed as applicable to adults if for teacher one
simply substitutes other. Adults also encounter difficulty in meeting the criteria
for appropriateness, for adults can be loud, talk too much, interrupt or butt in,
and allow talk to interfere with work. An examination of the disciplining of
adults in such circumstances might provide useful comparative data. That
adults encounter difficulties with this rule suggests that childrens violations are
not surprising either.
Rule 2: Follow directions. The violation of this rule was relatively easy to
see, for it involved a childs failing to follow directions which were
explicitly given. Disciplinary measures suggested that directions were non-
negotiable, understandable, followable, and executable. I gathered no data
to suggest that children were provided with an alternative to following
directions. Again it would seem that in some situations adults may come in
for negative sanctions for failing to follow directions where in other
situations they may choose not to without prejudice. The adult experience
that comes to my mind, one I certainly dont understand, is that of getting
lost, driving into a gas station for directions, and not listening to or
following the directions offered. I myself can feel clearly how my eyes glaze
over and I fail to pay attention. Although I cant say why I do this, I can
get away with it, paying only the penalty of staying lost. Arguments over
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directions among adults might provide useful data to compare with
childrens experiences (see Psathas, 1976).
Rule 3: Follow explicit rules for games, toys, and singing. Although I never
heard these rules stated except when they were violated, their statement on
those occasions suggested that they had been given to the children earlier and
children were expected to remember and follow them. Rule 2 is based on the
assumption that children will follow directions at the time they are given; Rule
3 suggests that children will remember and follow directions given some time in
the past.
Rule 4: Follow classroom rules. Whether or not these rules were ever stated
prior to any rule violation, they brought on discipline accompanied by the
assumption or statement that children knew these rules and that rule-
violation was thus in some sense intentional. I saw these rules as specific to
the classroom, i.e. as not necessarily applicable elsewhere but required in
the classroom. The specific negative sanctions I observed applied to the
following violations:

a. Not being able to put on outside clothing (jackets, hats, etc.) unaided;
b. Not wiping up spilled milk;
c. Not paying attention; not listening;
d. Fighting;
e. Running in the classroom;
f. Throwing dirt;
g. Going outside without permission;
h. Not cleaning up after projects;
i. Not sitting in ones own seat;
j. Leaving milk in the carton;
k Not carrying ones chair correctly;
l. Not completing work during assigned time.

Disciplinary responses to these actions were accompanied with the statement or
assumption that one knew better than to do that. As an adult, I can personally
call to mind adult occasions when I have broken all of these rules, except
fighting and throwing dirt, and perhaps my memory is simply faulty with
respect to those two. I of course, as an adult, would argue that I had good
reasons for my violations or that I did not accept the rules forbidding what I
did. Children in the classroom I observed did not seem to have these
alternatives.
Rule 5. Act like a normal person. Violations of these rules were met with
comments such as people dont do that. The teachers commands to stop
behavior that violated this rule seemed to be the first classroom articulations of
the specific rule. That a child would need to be told any one of these rules was
taken by the teacher as an indication of the childs limits. Disciplinary action
was taken in the face of the following violations:
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a. Banging the eraser with ones hand;
b. Pouting;
c. Following the teacher around the room;
d. Being too quiet;
e. Rolling on the floor;
f. Being overzealous;
g. Blocking the slide at recess;
h. Ripping ones book;
i. Dancing when the music was over.

I remember this final violation clearly: The teacher had put on a record for the
children to dance to. When the record stopped, all the children save one stopped
dancing. He seemed to me to be having such funfun which abruptly stopped
when the teacher told him to stop dancing because the music was over.
I have little difficulty in understanding why the teacher might find these
behaviors disruptive, but I am intrigued with what the children themselves had
in mind in engaging in these behaviors, an issue that was not addressed during
my observations, either by the teacher or by me. To respond to these actions as
rule-violations rather than as innovations, experiments, learning experiences,
etc. is to submerge their meanings under the label of deviance.
If a child set a goal of avoiding discipline, successful attainment would require
that a child remember all rules spoken by the teacher; understand, remember, and
follow all directions given; listen to the reprimands directed towards others; and
use common sense as that is defined by the teacher. Those who seem to choose to
draw disciplinary actions to themselves may well have been choosing that which
they seem unable to avoid anyway. If one chooses to get into trouble, it is indeed
a choice; if one gets into trouble unintentionally, choice is absent.
It should be obvious at this point that being a rule-abiding kindergartener is
no mean accomplishment; it involves extensive, sophisticated knowledge and
the grasp of a wide array of subtleties and nuances of words and action. Were
every rule-breaking act to be followed by discipline, however, there would be
far more discipline than I was seeing. Certainly the teacher simply missed some,
but only when I turned my attention to violations of the rules cited above did I
see the ways in which at least some of this missing was intentional on the
teachers part.
Selective Discipline
Indeed every instance of rule-breaking did not result in discipline. Once I
articulated the rules I saw operating, I noticed patterns in kinds of children
who did or did not get disciplined. I constructed categories on the basis of
the teachers informal talk about the children. The teachers assignment of
children to categories seemed to have important consequences for the
frequency with which they were disciplined and the acts that brought
discipline. Some children whose behavior seemed very similar to me and
who were disciplined quite differently turned out to be in different teacher
categories.
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Through the teachers talk about children, I was able to identify the
following categories. The categories are thus my creation, but the labels for
them are direct quotes from the teacher.
The independent and promising. These children were characterized by the
teacher as inventive, a character, everyone likes him, bright, nice, or
cute. These children seemed to be allowed to break the rules without negative
consequences. I observed instances where the teacher seemed aware of the rule-
breaking and did not discipline the child.
The promising but in need of supervision. These children were said by the
teacher to possess some of the characteristics of the foregoing category but were
also termed fresh, lazy, a talker, or a leader. Rules were applied most
rigorously to these children.
Those for whom, with supervision, there is some hope. These children were said
to possess some negative characteristics which might or might not be overcome.
Descriptions of these children included the terms strange, slow like the
mother, like a wild animal, sour-faced like the mother, and a wise guy.
These children were allowed some leeway in rule-breaking, being disciplined
more than the first category, less than the second.
The too young. These children were said by the teacher to be unlikely to be
promoted from kindergarten. They came in for a moderate amount of
discipline.
Those for whom there is little or no hope. This category included children
whom the teacher said had serious problems. One was said to have an I.Q. of
68, another to be crazy like the mother, a third to make unconnected remarks
like the mother. These children were disciplined only moderately.
The ignored. This final category included children whom the teacher disciplined
infrequently but the reasons did not emerge clearly in her conversations. One of
these children spoke no English, only German; another was said to never talk;
others simply seemed to be infrequently disciplined.
Although I do not have observations to substantiate my claim, it is my
impression that the teacher established categories early in the school year and
did not frequently change a childs assignment from one category to another.
My evidence does, however, suggest that children were disciplined with
reference to their category membership rather than to the nature of the rule
broken. Further work could usefully be done on the teachers creation of
categories. I found these categories not through observations but through
teachers talk, though after such talk I was able to observe instances of category
use. The basis of the teachers categorization was not always available through
observation. Although some children were categorized on the basis of their
observable behavior, others were categorized on the basis of what the teacher
knew from other sources. Thus in one instance the teacher explained to me that
although one child seemed to have little promise (a potential member of the
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category those for whom there is little or no hope) the teacher categorized that
child as having some promise (a member of the category those for whom, with
supervision, there is some hope) because the teacher had previous experience
with the childs siblings, who were just like him and eventually managed in
later grades.
In light of the teachers categorizations, it is clear that not all children are
equally disciplinable. Labeled deviance occurred in this kindergarten classroom
when a rule was broken and the child who broke the rule was viewed by the
teacher as a disciplinable child. Indeed I may have missed some rule-violations
if they were committed only by children who were in non-disciplinable
categories. To be disciplined, a child had to both act (break a rule) and be (the
kind of child who is disciplinable).
How to Make It in Kindergarten
If kindergarteners in the class I studied wanted to make it through the day
both 1) avoiding any discipline and 2) engaging in all possible activities,
including those prohibited by the rules, those children could follow the
descriptive pattern which I will now present. The kind of child to be
described would be able to avoid discipline and thus avoid being defined as
a rule-breaker or deviant. From the teachers point of view, such children
would be typical, non-deviant, not rule-breakers. Such children are not
necessarily ideal, good, in the process of learning, having fun, or bright;
such children merely avoid discipline with the minimal possible sacrifice of
activities.
These children may be of either sex and either white or black. They will
arrive at school after 8:15 a.m. but enough before 8:30 a.m. to be ready to begin
class at that time. When they arrive at school, they will remove coats, hats,
mittens, leggings, and boots unaided and will put them in the proper place in a
compartment provided for them. If they have brought in books or records, they
will either leave them in their compartments or on the teachers desk; in either
case, they will tell the teacher about it.
They will then play or talk until school begins. When talking, they will not
let their voices rise above the level set by the children as a group, i.e. their voices
will not be individually distinguishable in the group.
When the Star Spangled Banner begins to play over the loudspeaker, they
will immediately cease activities and face the flag. Under the teachers direction
they will salute the flag. They will then stand quietly while the teacher calls the
roll, answering here when she calls their names. If they know that a child is
absent, they may tell the teacher so when she calls that name.
After all names have been called, they may resume playing. Again, they
may talk or sing as long as no one voice is distinguishable. They may play
with any of the toys (with the possible exception of the blocks, which may
require the teachers permission) and may play either alone or with other
children.
Around 9:00 a.m., when the teacher instructs the class to clean up, they will
put away the toys they have been playing withcompleting puzzles they have
been using (it is interesting to note that doing a puzzle is considered a game until
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game time is over, after which the same activity becomes cleaning up, and
indeed may be done quickly even if it had presented apparent problems as a
game), putting all else back where they found itand under the teachers
direction and with the consent of any child involved, they may help to put away
other toys that they havent been playing with.
Either before or when the teacher indicates, they will stand behind any
unoccupied chairs and will assume this to be their place for the day unless the
teacher instructs otherwise. Whenever the children are told to return to the
tables, they will return to their place. When the teacher calls the number of the
table where they are sitting, they will carry their chairswith seats facing
towards them, hands on either sideto the circle and after placing the back legs
of the chairs on the dotted line on the floor and the left side of the chair against
the chair beside it, they will sit down some time before all others are seated.
(The formulation of this rule makes the last child a rule-breaker by definition.
There is always one potential deviant in this activity, though such deviance may
not be disciplined.) They may talk until all others are seated, at which time they
will be quiet.
If the teacher addresses questions to the class they may call out their
answer but will probably raise their hands. They will certainly do the latter
if the teacher instructs it. When called upon by the teacher, they will answer
immediately, briefly, and pertinently. They will remain sitting. When singing,
they will sing loudly but without shouting. The teacher should be just
barely able to distinguish each voice. They will know the words to the older
songs and will pay close attention to the newer songs and learn the words.
They will clap to the songs if the teacher suggests it or they may clap a bit
on their own.
After the singing, when the teacher is giving instructions for the days
project, they will sit quietly, listen, and may volunteer brief information,
especially if they have not done so before today. They will not speak with
other children at this time. When the teacher tells the children to return to
their tables, they will take their chairs and return to their place. They may
speak until all children are seated but then will be quiet and listen for
further instructions.
They will follow all instructions. When told to do so, they will line up for
necessary supplies. If it is absolutely necessary, they may ask the teacher for
help. They will work steadily on their project. If they are ahead of most of the
other children, they may talk quietly a little. If the teacher has given such
instructions, they will bring their finished projects to her as soon as they are
done. They will be able to do all projects adequately or better. As long as they
are working steadily, they may finish any time before the last child does. They
will put away their supplies.
If the children are called together to have a story read, they will sit within the
area from which they can see the book but not too close to the teacher. They
will sit on the floornot kneeland will neither talk nor move while the story
is being read. If responses are called for during the story, they will respond as
soon as they know the answer.
During a game, they may raise their hands to be called on but will not ask to
be chosen. They may talk with other children a bit. They will not give answers
to the child who is it and will not tell the teacher if another child does this.
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They may help those children who dont know the rules by telling them or
indicating to them what is to be done.
During rest period they will put their heads down on their arms and be quiet.
They may talk quietly when the teacher leaves the room but will be quiet when
she returns. They will not swing their feet or tap on the table. When it is time to
line up for milk and crackers, they will not push in line and will watch their milk
as they are carrying it so that it wont spill. They may spill it once, but if they do
so they will wipe it up with a paper towel. They will either finish their milk
completely or spill the last of it into the sink. When the teacher is in the room
they will return their carton to the wooden box, having first thrown the straw in
the wastebasket. If they finish their milk when the teacher is out of the room,
they will await her return before leaving their desks.
They will always walk inside the room. When it is time to go out to recess
and the teacher instructs the children to get ready, they will walk up to their
compartments, get completely ready unaided, and line up by the door, where
they will wait until the teacher tells the children to go outside. They may talk
during this period.
Once outside, they will not hang around the teacher but will play with the
other children or alone. They will not get covered with dirt. They may yell,
scream, or run. They will not throw dirt, nor will they climb on the fence or
obstruct the slide. They may otherwise play with relative freedom. When the
teacher calls the children to come inside, they will stand in line at the door, not
pushing, and will wait until the children are told to go inside.
They will hang up their coats in their compartments unless the teacher
instructs the class to hang them on the backs of their chairs, in which case they
will do so and perhaps check to be sure any projects they are taking home are in
front of their chairs on the table. They may talk during this time but will be
attentive to any instructions the teacher gives.
If a record is going to be played, they will sit down on the floor near the
record player and may talk a bit but will be quiet when the teacher approaches
the record player.
At the teachers instruction, they will put on their outside clothing and sit in
their compartments until an adult arrives to take them home. They will remember
to take their projects home though they may ask the teacher if she wants to keep
them. They may run out of the building to meet the adult who has come for
them and will leave the school at a little before 11:15 a.m.
It should be clear that making it in kindergarten, i.e. avoiding discipline,
requires extensive and complex knowledge. If the above description were to be
elaborated in terms of the knowledge it presupposes, the result would suggest
an impressive array that is assumed to be within the grasp of those who are also
assumed to be immature, lacking in experience, and too young for many
adult activities. Here I simply will note two such spheres of knowledge that
strike me as of singular subtlety.
These kindergarteners were expected to be able to see themselves in
terms of others and make comparisons to guide their own behavior. They
were expected to keep their voices at or below the level of others, regardless
of what that level was or how it was achieved. They could talk if they were
ahead of others in projects but not if they were in step with others or
110
behind. They could talk until everyone was seated but not after. No one
was supposed to be last (and thus, except in the case of ties, every activity
could generate a deviant).
Kindergarteners were also expected to make judgments without clear
guidelines, based primarily on experiences, by self or others, of negative
responses to wrong judgments. They were, for instance, not to sit too close to
the teacher, but criteria for too close were vague at best. They were expected to
be normal, again an apparently criteria-less condition. And they were
expected to talk enough but not too much.
There is an external constraint on kindergarteners using the above model
to make it in kindergarten: the model does not, because it cannot, embody
the teachers categorizations of children, for such categorizations seem to lie
largely outside of childrens sphere of influence. Or do they? Do
kindergarteners seek to influence teachers perceptions of them? As an
adult, acting in everyday life, I might have said they dont, they cant,
theyre too young, they dont know enough, but as a sociologist suspending
adult everyday conceptions about children, now Im not so sure. Im
inclined to ask how they might go about this and to direct research to the
topic.
Conclusion
A consideration of kindergarteners deviance reveals insights into some aspects
of deviance that heretofore were less clear. By taking a sociological rather than
an adult perspective, one can gain knowledge about children that would
otherwise be hidden.
The link between deviance and difference emerges clearly from my data. To
stand out in relation to othersby being louder, quieter, faster, slower, etc.
can in itself be sufficient to draw the label of deviant. The road to non-
deviance seems to follow the path of unnoticeability. To be like others
whatever those others are likeis to achieve a kind of anonymity and a safety
from discipline. The issue here is not to conceal what one does but to do it
unnoticeably. When adults are found to be different or find others different, a
variety of rhetorics emerge to justify, rationalize, and explain why such
difference is good/bad, acceptable/unacceptable, etc. Such rhetoric may conceal
what is disclosed in the study of childrenthe implicit deviance in merely being
different.
By suspending an adult view and thus the taken-for-granted assumptions
that the teachers rules are right and for the childrens own good, I found myself
puzzling over the origins and functions of the teachers rules. Where do they
come from? What do they do? My data does not allow me to answer these
questions but does allow me to pose them. Further, my data suggests that the
answers will be found not in the needs of children but in the social world which
teacher and children inhabit.
It certainly is no surprise to any sociologist that rules are differentially
applied, but I found it noteworthy that the teacher could explicate so clearly
reasons for this differential application. My data on selective discipline suggests
that the teacher was doing something when she was disciplining and when she
111
was not disciplining that was in some sense independent of the violated rule
itself. Furthermore, what she was doing was related to previously formulated
notions about childrens membership in categories and to strategies for acting
in terms of members of different categories. In this view, the rule seems less
important than the nature of the rule-breaker.
Certainly there are many ways that one can learn rules. One method that
emerged from my studya method that might have emerged in a study of
adults but that caught me by surprise as so obvious when I was looking at
childrenwas learning a rule by being punished (or seeing someone else
punished) for its breaking. The rule that one should be normal displays
this method most clearly: one learns to stop dancing when the music is over
by dancing when the music is over and getting disciplined. Folk wisdom
calls this learning the hard way. Adult experiences of this kind of rule-
learning would seem to be a promising source of data. The risk, of course,
in this kind of learning, is that one may get labeled deviant through one
such experience and retain the label even though the behavior itself is
forsworn.
Although one could certainly make the argument that childrens deviance is
different from adults deviance, I am impressed with the many similarities that
emerge when childrens deviance is taken seriously. One characteristic of
children that is of particular significance in understanding their deviance is their
relative powerlessness in terms of rule-making, enforcement, and breaking,
given the adult world they inhabit for so much of their everyday lives. Further
comparison of childrens deviance with that of other relatively powerless
groups would seem particularly promising.
Another potential source of data that emerges from consideration of
childrens deviance lies in the reasons for their rule violations. Everyday life
adult views suggest that children violate rules because they dont know any
better, because the havent learned the rules yet, because they are too young,
etc., but suspending such views allows us to ask children themselves for
explanations of their behavior. Why was one child rolling on the floor? Why
was another banging the eraser? Why dance when the music is over? Posing
these questions serves as both an insight from this research and a stimulus to
further research.
By applying the concept of deviance to children, one can bring into view
aspects of deviant behavior less obvious in the deviant behavior of adults.
Studying children can thus serve sociologists as a way of bringing to light that
which is hidden to them from an adult perspective. Applying to the study of
children a whole range of sociological concepts customarily reserved for the
analysis of adult behavior is thus a fruitful way to clarify and enrich those
concepts.
Taking children seriously as subjects of sociological studynot as children
but as members of the social worldnot only promises conceptual insights but
also brings to light a whole range of previously hidden data: what children do
and think and see and mean in their own terms and how they live their lives
with others, both adults and children. Viewing children as social actors in social
worlds makes it possible to pose questions about what they are doing; such
questions can only be asked, however, if one begins by considering the
possibility that children are doing something and have reasons for what they
112
are doing. I have found that by suspending my adult assumptions about
children and looking at them as I look at other social actors, I find far more that
children are doing than my everyday life attitude as an adult could have ever led
me to expect.
I would like to thank the following people, who read various versions of this
paper and offered helpful suggestions: Julius A.Roth, Norman H.Waksler, Erica
Cavin, Nancy Mandell, and Peter and Patricia Adler.
113
Chapter 9

Watching People Watching Babies
Mary Constantine Joyce
Commentary
This study was conducted by a college student for a course entitled Sociology of
Everyday Life. Joyce provides useful material for considering what interactions
between adults and children can be like, shows the kinds of insights within the
grasp of a neophyte sociologist, and suggests the difficulties of seeing
sociological significance in what everybody knows.
The major insight of the paper is Joyces identification and documentation of
what she calls simply The Looka facial arrangement that she first notes on
adults looking at babies. That such a look exists is certainly not an astounding
finding, but recognition of it as a sociological phenomenon allows for its
investigation in a systematic fashion. When is it used? By whom? With what
implications? Joyce provides a preliminary exploration of the first two questions.
She does not deal with the implications of The Look; at the conclusion of her
article I suggest a few ideas in this regard.
As a study, Joyces work is avowedly suggestive rather than definitive. Implicit
in it are a variety of lines for further systematic study. It invites the readers
participation in identifying other instances and in following through on the
interactional implications of The Look. It takes the perspective of the adults
involved and does not explore the childrens perspectivea perspective deserving
of a study in its own right. It documents, however, a feature of the adult world
that has important implications for childrens social worlds.
F.C.W.
When thinking about a topic for a sociological study, I thought of how I found
it interesting to watch the ways people act when they are around small children.
I narrowed down my topic to: watching people watching babies.
Used by permission of the author. Editorial revision by F.C.W.
114
My information was gathered through observations at maternity wards in
hospitals, in a local day care center, and in public parks by simply watching
and recording the different types of behavior displayed by people watching
babies.
As I proceeded with the gathering of my data, I began to get quite nervous
because I was finding very much what I expected to find. People were acting in
just the ways I knew they would act before I began this study: they would smile
continuously at small children, raise their voices to a higher pitch, and bend
over or kneel down to the childs level. At this point I wanted to change my
topic and probably would have done so if it hadnt been too late in the semester
to start something new. I continued, but felt I wouldnt learn anything new or
interesting from doing it. The first phase of my study was thus a set of
observations with no surprises.
Phase One: Adults Watching Babies
I obtained my initial data through observations in the maternity wards of
three local hospitals. I began by just walking around each maternity ward,
then standing in corners taking notes, trying to be as inconspicuous as
possible. My invisibility was quite easy to achieve; people were so busy
watching the babies that not once did anyone question or even acknowledge
my presence.
After gathering a modest amount of data in three maternity wards, I
identified four areas of behavior that seemed to take on specific features when
adults were watching babies: 1) tone of voice, 2) form and content of verbal
statements, 3) facial expressions (The Look), and 4) posture. In all of my
observations, my findings were quite similar.
Tone of Voice
A frequent observation was that the tone of voice used by adults was
noticeably higher than that used in ordinary adult conversation. There were
some exceptions to this finding but the higher tone appeared to be both
typical and unnoticeable to those using it. The sight of a baby seemed to
elicit this tone.
Form and Content of Verbal Statements
Some adults engaged in what I would call baby talk, i.e. talk used by
adults when addressing babies (not the goo-goo-ga-ga that is sometimes
called baby talk, i.e. talk by babies, though few babies seem to use it).
Examples include Hi, honey, dragging out the y when pronouncing the
word honey, and Youre such a pretty baby, dragging out the y in
baby so that it sounds like baybeeeeee. Another frequent occurrence was
the repetition of a simple statement coupled with a high-pitched voice and
115
The Look on their faces: Youre gonna be such a big boy, yeah, youre
gonna be a big boy. To an outside observer both form and content can
sound ridiculous but those engaged in the activity proceeded as if their
behavior were quite ordinary. They seemed not to be listening to what they
were saying but just went on and on.*
Facial Expressions: The Look
This category was particularly enjoyable to observe and became the central
feature of my study. I observed a definite facial change in all those I observed
who were watching babies. People certainly didnt all look alikethey didnt
all have the exact same facial expressionyet I could definitely say I saw a
certain identical look on their faces when they were looking at babies. The
Look can be impressionistically characterized as a constant, whole-hearted,
everlasting smile accompanied by sparkling eyes fixed with fascination upon
the child. People looked like they were dazed, yet happily dazed. The smiles did
not leave their faces the entire time they were talking to or watching the child.
The Look seemed so obviously one of pleasure, happiness, and contentment.
The Look is very difficult to describe verbally but I found it immediately
recognizable when I saw it.
Posture
Since all my observations at the maternity ward took place where people were
standing in front of a glass looking through to the babies, I did not notice
anything of significance in this category. It is included here because it seems to
me that the physical structure of the hospital might have prevented behavior
that would occur in other settings. Indeed, my later observations demonstrate a
posture that is typical of adults watching babies when they are tactilely
available to each other.
After collecting and organizing my data from the maternity wards, I
reached the point described earlier where I just was not happy with what
I had. I had findings but my response was so what? and who cares?
This drawback, however, worked into an advantage because my
dissatisfaction led me to search elsewhere for The Look and I was
somewhat surprised at where and when I found it. My further
investigations led me to day care centers, where I observed adults
interacting with young children (older than infants) and to pet stores,
where I continued to see The Look.
* Further study might be devoted to the use of verbalizations that are designed for
something other than communication. Is the infant expected to understand statements
like those described? What indeed are such statements designed to do? [Waksler]
116
Phase Two: Adults Watching Children and Children Watching
Babies*
I went to a local family day care center located in a private home, where I sat in
a corner and observed what was going on. The children here were older than
the infants in the maternity wards, ranging in age from 22 months to 4 years.
All of the children were able to walk around.
My observations here had many similarities with those made in the
maternity wards. Again I observed adults talking to children in high pitched
voices. When they watched the children, the adults here too had that same
Look. In contrast to the maternity wards, I recorded far more baby talk. I also
had the chance to observe the posture of people watching children. When adults
were talking to children, they typically adopted a kneeling or bending position
that brought them to the childs level.
Although I did overhear adults talking to children without using it, baby
talk was clearly an ordinary event. Since I was able to gather more instances of
baby talk, I was able to characterize this kind of talk more fully. Baby talk as
uttered by adults can be said to differ from adult talk in its distinctly higher
pitch, wide fluctuations in intonation (from a low to a high range), a simple
vocabulary, and shorter sentences. I heard a lot of repeated syllables (ma-ma,
da-da) and the regular use of words ending in a y sound (tummy, beddy). I
recorded sentences such as Mama is coming to take you bye-bye now and Do
you want your ba-ba now? (ba-ba referring to bottle). When I heard this
latter question being asked by the mother of the child, I asked why she used the
word ba-ba and she told me that her child could not say bottle and said ba-
ba instead. The mother thus communicated with her child using the childs
language.
The facial expression I have termed The Look was clearly in evidence at the
day care center and seemed almost identical to its form in the maternity wards.
The Look was not always used, however, but seemed to alternate with a
modification characterized by a more ordinary adult expression combined with
a special sparkle in the eyes. The eyes seemed in fact to be physically larger,
opened very wide, alive and shining.
A surprising finding of my day care observations was the presence of The
Look on the faces of children observing children younger than they. On a
number of occasions when adults came to the center with younger children, I
observed children displaying The Look when looking at the baby. I observed
children running over and saying Look! A little baby! (Note that the speakers
were no older than 4 themselves.) Next they would hunch over or bend down
on their knees and all of a sudden that same look would appear on their little
* The dividing line between the categories of babies and children is not clear and is
drawn in different ways by different people for different purposes. The author does not
provide criteria for her assignment of members to these two categories but does provide
evidence that criteria vary according to who is making the assignments. Clearly this-
topic would be a fruitful one for study in its own right. [Waksler]
117
faces. The constant smile, the glowing eyes, everything was the same as that
displayed by adults.
Since the facial expression used by the children was similar to that of the
adults observed here and in the maternity wards, I sought for instances of
such similarities in baby talk as well. I really wondered if I could identify
childrens baby talk since those using it were to my mind little more than
babies themselves, with what I thought would be a somewhat precarious
grasp of their own language abilities. I was surprised to find that I could
very easily identify their baby talk. The children used a higher pitched
voice than their normal one and simpler sentences and words than they
customarily used.
One example is provided by Lauren, age 3, who was speaking to her brother
Logan, 13 months. She said, Hi, Logan. I miss you today, extending the y in
the word today. Then she tried to pick up her brother but stopped when he
started to cry. She continued talking, saying Come on, Logan, we go bye-bye
now. Taking his hand, she said, We have to go home and eat mum-mum now.
These kinds of observations were not uncommon when children were talking to
babies, suggesting both that they identify babies and that they can treat them
like babies.
Phase Three: Informal Observations of Other Instances of
The Look
My concern with The Look led me to notice its occurrence as I went about my
everyday life. Here I note two settings worthy of more systematic study.
I dropped into a pet store simply to look at the puppies but as I moved from
watching the puppies to watching the puppy-watchers, I noticed The Look. I
must have been in dozens of pet stores in my life but it was only after working
on this study that I saw what I must have had many opportunities to see before.
The Look was unmistakable, just like the one used by both adults and children
watching babies. I also heard people talking in baby talk to the puppies: Hi,
doggie. Youre a pretty doggie. Once again there was the extended y sound
and the repetition.* When one of the puppies was let out in the shop to run
around, almost all of those in the crowd that gathered had The Look on their
faces. My observations here are certainly not extensive or systematic but they
do suggest fruitful lines for further research.
The Look Between Adults
When I was telling a friend of mine about my study, she began to laugh and
offered an example that suggests yet another area where The Look might be
* Those interested in experiencing the strength of this taken-for-granted rule to use
baby talk with kittens should try to say Hi, kitty just once, without repetition, and in
a deep voice. [Waksler]
118
found. She explained that whenever her boyfriend wanted her to do something,
he would adopt a baby look and she, struck by his resemblance to a baby,
found that something came over her and made her smile and kind of get
hypnotized and do what he wanted. The look she described herself adopting
sounded very much like The Look, used not towards a baby but towards
someone intentionally looking like a baby.
My study is clearly preliminary and requires further documentation. There do
appear to be a number of places that The Look can be sought. Certainly The
Look is not restricted to adults watching babies, but I have only identified the
possibility that there is a broad range of situations where it occurs and have
only begun to identify some of these sources. I have found, however, that merely
recognizing the existence of The Look allows me to identify it in places where I
had never noticed it before.
Concluding Note
Having established that The Look exists, what are the implications of its
existence? If we set aside the idea of socialization and focus our attention on
adult-child interactions, we can see The Look as an important constituent of
such interactions. It need not occur, but when it does it seems to add a
noteworthy feature. It both creates and reflects an adult perspective in which
children seem to be viewed as highly-valued objects. Clearly The Look is
appreciative, but at the same time those to whom The Look is directed are
defined as to be looked at, i.e. as objects, rather than as interactional partners.
As Joyce demonstrates, The Look can be accompanied by a voice, a
particular way of talking that reinforces the idea that the one looked at has
some special quality. It can also be accompanied by a posture that, while
enabling the two participants to be on the same level, may also indicate that the
one comes down to the level of the other. Neither look nor voice nor posture
allows for ordinary interaction, for one of the partners is set aside as in some
sense different and even extraordinary.
The Look indicates both that the object is special and that others to whom
The Look is not directed are, by implication, not special. Further observations
of adults, newborns, and their older siblings would seem a particularly fruitful
source of observation, for The Look can be put on for the newborn and taken
off for the sibling, perhaps unknowingly by adults but perhaps all too
apparently to the sibling.
The role of The Look, the voice, and the posture in adult/child interactions
would appear to be a fruitful topic for further study.
F.C.W.
119
Part III

Children in a Childs World

The articles in Part III contribute to an understanding of childrens social
worlds from the perspectives of the children who inhabit those worlds. The
authors have taken children seriouslywatching them and listening to them as
sociologists would any adults being studied. Unlike some of the adults described
throughout this book, the authors here do not present children as unfinished,
undeveloped, or merely emergent or as objects to be socialized or in other
ways acted upon, nor do they look at children with The Look described by
Joyce. Rather they take children to be fully human actors, both constructing
social worlds of their own and acting in worlds not of their making.
Readers are urged to suspend judgment on the reality, truth, or correctness of
childrens views and to resist the urge to view childrens ideas and actions as
simply a stage in development or as something they will outgrow. In everyday
life, adult biases towards children are both strongly pronounced and taken for
granted. Vigilance is necessary if one is to avoid such biases and come to an
understanding of children as children, in their own terms. To aid this process,
readers might recall their own experiences as children, and in particular their
own frustration and anger at adult interference and redefinition of activities.
Those who remember being interrupted by adults because they were just
playing or being told youre wrong and youll understand when you grow up
will find such memories a useful prod to taking seriously the childrens
experiences described in Part III.
F.C.W.
121

Chapter 10

The Culture of Children
Iona and Peter Opie
Commentary
The Opies have devoted enormous effort to extensive collecting of childrens lore
sayings, rhymes, cautionary slogans, games, etc.much of which is neither created
by nor taught by adults. Origin and transmission rest with children, and
transmission can occur, sometimes quite rapidly, both within and among countries.
The Opies concern is not with how this happensclearly an exceedingly complex,
intriguing, but separate concernbut with the surprising fact that it occurs at all.
The material that follows, excerpted from two chapters of the Opies book,
provides a wide variety of examples of childrens lore. The existence of such
material clearly suggests that children are more than receivers of adult culture
and of ideas developed by adults; children are in fact active creators of the
social worlds in which they live. For this reason the Opies speak of childrens
culture, i.e. what anthropologists refer to as a design for living. All of the
Opies material suggests the existence of a culture or cultures of childhood
independent of adults, created, sustained, and destroyed by children for their
own purposes, whatever those purposes might be.
Childrens accomplishments are quite clearly beyond what could be achieved
by mere reacting objects or empty buckets but are within the capacities of
those called children. The children who produce the kind of data gathered by
the Opies possess knowledge, wit, a sense of the possibilities of language, and
detailed ideas about the worlds they inhabit. That children are capable of such
productions suggests that in other ways as well their capacities may well
transcend adult expectations.
The data presented by the Opies is largely British in origin. Some will
nonetheless be familiar to members of other cultures, thus reinforcing the
Iona and Peter Opie, 1959. Reprinted from Chapter I, Introductory, The Lore and
Language of Schoolchildren by Iona and Peter Opie (1959) by permission of Oxford
University Press.
Iona and Peter Opie, 1959. Reprinted from Chapter II, Half-Belief, The Lore
and Language of Schoochildren by Iona and Peter Opie (1959) by permission of
Oxford University Press.
122
Opies claim that such knowledge can be shared by children worldwide. Other
examples may not be familiar in their specifics but examples of the same kind
can be found. I have provided [in brackets] some US examples; readers will in
all likelihood be able to supplement the Opies examples and mine with ones
drawn from their own childhood.
In analyzing childrens lore, the Opies introduce, though they dont really
analytically develop, the intriguing concept of half-belief to refer to those
beliefs both held and denied, simultaneously believed and not believed. Any
adult who knocks on wood or avoids walking under a ladder, not out of
conviction but rather just to be on the safe side, knows the meaning of half-
belief. The Opies also use the word superstition, but the negative connotations
of that wordthe idea of a belief without any foundationbiases what could
otherwise be viewed in value-neutral terms. Half-belief suggests an idea that is
simultaneously questioned and used. This of two minds quality of the concept
strikes me as its core, a fundamental ambiguity that is lost in the idea of
superstition.
The Opies presentation of the concept of half-belief embodies a somewhat
condescending, adult approach to this topic. If, however, the concept is not
restricted to children and the childish but instead is seen as referring to a
human possibility, it can provide insights into childrens knowledge,
particularly where it differs in detail from adult knowledge, and into
childrens particular concerns. It can also be entertained as a possible
sociological concept applicable to adults as well as children. (Indeed Roths
1957 article, Ritual and Magic in the Control of Contagion, would seem an
excellent example of a half-belief in germs held by medical professionals.)
Readers may find as they make their way through this selection that many of
the beliefs and practices cited sound silly, peculiar, or obviously false until they
encounter a belief they themselves hold; that belief or practice somehow seems
to be far less peculiar and more sensible. Readers might find it useful to identify
some of their own half-beliefs, both from childhood and in use in adulthood,
e.g. those associated with the taking of examinations or the attainment of love.
Recognition of such half-beliefs of ones own may prove useful in taking
seriously those held by children.
F.C.W.
123

The Culture of Children 1:
Introductory
The scraps of lore which children learn from each other are at once more real,
more immediately serviceable, and more vastly entertaining to them than anything
which they learn from grown-ups. To a child it can be a known fact that the
Lords Prayer said backwards raises the devil, that a small knife-wound between
the thumb and forefinger gives a person lock-jaw, that a hair from the head placed
on the palm will split the masters cane. It can be a useful piece of knowledge that
the reply to A pinch and a punch for the first of the month is A pinch and a kick
for being so quick. And a verse a child hears the others saying,

Mister Fatty Belly, how is your wife?
Very ill, very ill, up all night,
Cant eat a bit of fish
Nor a bit of liquorice.
O-U-T spells out and out you must go
With a jolly good clout upon your ear hole spout,

may seem the most exciting piece of poetry in the language. [Compare with the
two US rhymes,

Fatty, fatty two-by-four
Couldnt get through the bathroom door
So he did it on the floor.
One potato, two potato, three potato, four,
Five potato, six potato, seven potato more.
Out goes Y-O-U.]

Such a verse, recited by 8-year-olds in Birmingham, can be as traditional and as
well known to children as a nursery rhyme; yet no one would mistake it for one
of Mother Gooses compositions. It is not merely that there is a difference in
cadence and subject-matter, the manner of its transmission is different. While a
nursery rhyme passes from a mother or other adult to the small child on her
124
knee, the school rhyme circulates simply from child to child, usually outside the
home, and beyond the influence of the family circle. By its nature a nursery
rhyme is a jingle preserved and propagated not by children but by adults, and in
this sense it is an adult rhyme. It is a rhyme which is adult approved. The
schoolchilds verses are not intended for adult ears. In fact part of their fun is
the thought, usually correct, that adults know nothing about them. Grown-ups
have outgrown the schoolchilds lore. If made aware of it they tend to deride it;
and they actively seek to suppress its livelier manifestations. Certainly they do
nothing to encourage it. And the folklorist and anthropologist can, without
travelling a mile from his door, examine a thriving unselfconscious culture (the
word culture is used here deliberately) which is unnoticed by the sophisticated
world, and quite as little affected by it, as is the culture of some dwindling
aboriginal tribe living out its helpless existence in the hinterland of a native
reserve. Perhaps, indeed, the subject is worthy of a more formidable study than
is accorded it here. As Douglas Newton has pointed out: The world-wide
fraternity of children is the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which
shows no sign of dying out.
Continuity
No matter how uncouth schoolchildren may outwardly appear, they remain
traditions warmest friends. Like the savage, they are respecters, even
venerators, of custom; and in their self-contained community their basic
lore and language seems scarcely to alter from generation to generation.
Boys continue to crack jokes that Swift collected from his friends in Queen
Annes time; they play tricks which lads used to play on each other in the
heyday of Beau Brummel; they ask riddles which were posed when Henry
VIII was a boy
The same continuity obtains in their games and play songs. When the
Birmingham 8-year-olds chant about Mister Fatty Belly they are perpetuating
a verse with a lineage going back to schooldays under the Regency, for
P.H.Gosse (the father of Sir Edmund) recorded that when he was at school,
181823: One boy meeting another would address him with these queries, the
other giving the replies:

Doctor! Doctor! hows your wife?
Very bad, upon my life.
Can she eat a bit of pie?
Yes, she can, as well as I.
1

Today, sets of these responses, usually repeated for counting-out [i.e.
selecting one member from a group, as in choosing who will be it for tag or
hide and seek] or skipping, have been collected from schoolchildren in
Aberdeen, Bath, Manchester, Market Rasen, Scarborough, Spennymoor,
Tunstall, and York City; and some of the versions are all but identical with
the rhyme as it was known more than 130 years ago. Thus a 12-year-old
Spennymoor girl reports:
125
The Culture of Children 1
When I get home from school there is usually some little girls out of the
infants school playing in the street, and their special little rhyme is:

Little fatty doctor, hows your wife?
Very well, thank you, shes alright.
Can she eat a twopenny pie?
Yes sir, yes sir, and so can I.
The older girls think that rhyme is silly for them, so they play faster
games.
Apparent Uniformity of the Lore
The fact that schoolchild lore continues to thrive in a natural manner amongst
unselfconscious adherents, and that we have been able to watch it functioning
in a number of widely separated communities, has allowed us to carry our study
a step further than we thought possible at the outset; it has enabled us to obtain
a picture of the state of traditional lore over the country as a whole. Thus it has
shown that traditional lore exists everywhere; that as many, if not more,
traditional games are known to city children as to country children; and that
children with homes and backgrounds as different from each other as mining
community and garden suburb share jokes, rhymes, and songs which are basically
identical.
2
Conscious as we were of the economy of human invention, and the
tenacity of oral tradition (the two elements without which there would be no
folklore), we were not prepared for quite the identity of ritual and phraseology
which has been revealed throughout the land in childrens everyday witticisms,
and in the newer of their self-organized amusements.
The faithfulness with which one child after another sticks to the same
formulas even of the most trivial nature is remarkable. A meaningless counting-
out phrase such as Pig snout, walk out, sometimes adapted to Boy Scout, walk
out, or a tag for two-balls like Shirley Temple is a star, S-T-A-R, is apparently
in use throughout England, Scotland, and Wales. If, in the vicinity of
Westminster, a visitor hears for the first time children skipping to the simple
chant,

Big Ben strikes one,
Big Ben strikes two,
Big Ben strikes three,

he may well suppose that the words are the just-for-the-minute invention of a
particularly unimaginative local child. Yet this formula is repeated all over
London, down side-streets behind the Victorian mansions of Kensington, in the
bustle of Hackney, in Manor Park, and outside London in Croydon, Enfield,
and Welwyn. Travelling farther afield it will be found in use at Scunthorpe in
Lincolnshire, at Cwmbran in Monmouthshire, in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, and,
in fact, apparently everywhere. Nor is it a passing fad of the juvenile fancy, for
it will be found that Norman Douglas quotes it in London Street Games (p. 49);
and the fact has to be faced that since 1916 some 30 million children have
126
dashed through the nations playgrounds, respecters neither of persons nor
property, yet preserving the silly chant as carefully as if it was a magic
incantation. Similarly Pig snout, walk out is known to have been current in the
Island of Bute in 1911.
3
And although Shirley Temple is a star cannot be so
old, children have carried it to Australia and Canada and have planted it in
those countries, or, perhaps, have brought it here from across the sea
Speed of Oral Transmission
Since, through our collaborators, it has been possible to keep an eye on several
widely separated places simultaneously, we have, on occasion, been afforded
glimpses of oral transmission in actual operation. The speed with which a
newly made-up rhyme can travel the length and breadth of the country by the
schoolchild grapevine seems to be little short of miraculous. Some idea of the
efficiency of oral transmission can be obtained by the following verses which
are topical, or which are parodies of newly published songs, and can
consequently be dated, although for test purposes it is, unfortunately, best to
study specimens which are of a scurrilous or indelicate nature for with these
there is, in general, less likelihood of dissemination by means other than word-
of-mouth.
A notorious instance of the transmission of scurrilous verses occurred in
1936 at the time of the Abdication [of King Edward VII, Duke of Windsor, to
marry American divorcee Wallace Simpson]. The word-of-mouth rhymes
which then gained currency were of a kind which could not possibly, at that
time, have been printed, broadcast, or even repeated in the music halls. One
verse, in particular, made up one can only wonder by whom,

Hark the Herald Angels sing,
Mrs. Simpsons pinched our king,

was on juvenile lips not only in London, but as far away as Chichester in
the south, and Liverpool and Oldham in the north. News that there was a
constitutional crisis did not become public property until around 25
November that year, and the king abdicated on 10 December. Yet at a
school Christmas party in Swansea given before the end of the term,
Christmas 1936, when the tune played happened to be Hark the Herald
Angels Sing, a mistress found herself having to restrain her small children
from singing this lyric, known to all of them, which cannot have been
composed much more than three weeks previously. Many an advertising
executive with a six-figure budget at his disposal might envy such crowd
penetration. Similarly, the ultra juvenile verse,

Temptation, temptation, temptation.
Dick Barton went down to the station,
Blondie was there
All naked and bare,
Temptation, temptation, temptation
127
wherever it may have originated, was reported to us in quick succession as rife
among children in Kirkcaldy in January 1952, as known to children in Swansea in
January 1952, and it reached children in Alton in February 1952. These three
places are up to 400 miles apart; yet an instance of even more distant transmission
can be cited. At the beginning of 1956 The Ballad of Davy Crockett was launched
on the radio. It was especially intended to appeal to children, and quickly reached
the top of the adult hit parade. But the official words of the ballad, beginning

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee,
Greenest state in the Land of the Free,

were very small beer compared with the word-of-mouth stanzas which rapidly
won approval in juvenile society. One composition, beginning The Yellow
Rose of Texas, was collected in Perth in April 1956, in Alton, Battersea, Great
Bookham, Reading, and Scarborough in July 1956, in Kent in August 1956,
and in Swansea in September 1956. Another parody sung by schoolgirls in
Swansea in September 1956, appeared to have local associations:

Born on a table top in Joes Cafe,
Dirtiest place in the USA
Polished off his father when he was only three,
Polished off his mother with DDT.
Davy, Davy Crockett,
King of the Wild Frontier.

The teacher who sent this verse remarked that Joes Cafe was a popular
Swansea establishment near the beach. Subsequently, however, we had news of
the verse being current in Brentwood, Hornchurch, Reading, Upminster, and
Woolwich, all naming Joes Cafe. But unknown to any of our home observers,
and before the official Davy Crockett song had reached Britain, an Australian
correspondent, writing 3 January 1956, had reported that the following ditty
was sweeping the schools in Sydney:

Reared on a paddle, pop in Joes cafe,
The dirtiest dump in the USA,
Poisoned his mother with DDT
And shot his father with a .303
Davy, Davy Crockett,
The man who is no good.

It seems that the schoolchild underground also employs trans-world couriers.
Wear and Repair During Transmission
The previous section has shown how quickly a rhyme passes from one
schoolchild to the next, and illustrates a further difference between school
lore and nursery lore. In nursery lore a verse or tradition, learnt in early
128
childhood, is not usually passed on again until the little listener has grown
up, and has children of his own, or even grandchildren. The period between
learning a nursery rhyme and transmitting it may be anything from twenty
to seventy years. With the playground lore, however, a rhyme may be
excitedly passed on within the very hour it is learnt; and, in general, it
passes between children who are the same age, or nearly so, since it is
uncommon for the difference in age between playmates to be more than five
years. If, therefore, a playground rhyme can be shown to have been current
for a hundred years, or even just for fifty, it follows that it has been
retransmitted over and over again; very possibly it has passed along a chain
of two or three hundred young hearers and tellers, and the wonder is that it
remains alive after so much handling, let alone that it bears resemblance to
the original wording.
In most schools there is a wholly new generation of children every six years;
and when a rhyme such as Little fatty doctor, hows your wife/ can be shown
to be more than 130 years old it may be seen that it has passed through the
keeping of not less than twenty successive generations of school-children, and
been exposed to the same stresses that nursery lore would meet only after 500
years of oral conveyance. This, in itself, makes schoolchild lore of peculiar
value to the student of oral communication, for the behavior and defects of oral
transmission can be seen in operation during a relatively short period, much as
if the phenomenon had been placed in a mechanical stresser to speed up the
wear and tear.
Thus we find that variations, even apparently creative ones, occur more
often by accident than by design. Usually they come about through mishearing
or misunderstanding, as in the well-know hymnal misapprehension:

Can a womans tender care
Fail towards the child she-bear?

[I remember being taught as a child a song called Playmate with the line
slide down my rain barrel. I have recently overheard children singing the
song with the transformation slide down my rainbow. Variations heard in
recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance further exemplify the process the
Opies are describing here.] A line in the song Im a knock-kneed sparrow
quickly becomes Im a cockney sparrow. Calico breeches, no longer
familiar to youth today, become comical breeches. Elecampane becames
elegantpain. Green gravel, green gravel becomes by association
Greengages, greengages. And the unmeaning Alligoshee, alligoshee, in the
marching game, is rationalized to Adam and Eve went out to tea. At one
school the pledges Die on oath, Dianothe, and Diamond oath were all
found to be current at the same time. The common tendency to speed up a
ritual or abridge a formula also produces surprising results. At a Surrey
school the pledge Cubs honour became, by jest, Cubs-on-a-car, which
was presently abridged, so that the standard pledge became Car. Indeed
the corruptive influence of the pun on language and custom is more
considerable than might be supposed. When a child, as a sign of derision,
expels air through his compressed lips, the stock retort is We have them
with custard. The chain here is that breaking wind was, at one time, by the
129
process of rhyming slang, known as a raspberry tart, hence raspberry.
Subsequently this became the name for the imitative noise made with the
mouth; and this term is still retained, although it has disappeared as a name
for the original exhalation.
Again, a fool is very generally called a blockhead, his head being likened to
the denseness of wood. Consequently, as a joke, when somebody says touch
wood he is liable on occasion to touch the head of a notorious dunce, or of a
child whom he wishes to make out to be a dunce, or, in self-deprecation, his
own head. This joke has in fact become so commonplace that many children are
already forgetting that touching the head is a joke, and state seriously: If you
say that something nice is going to happen you must either touch wood or your
head, or, without qualification, To avert ill-luck it is the custom to touch your
head. So it is that the time is upon us when, in a prefabricated classroom with
desks and fittings manufactured entirely out of plastic and chromium, it will
not be possible for children to touch wood, only their heads; and when these
children grow up it may become normal with the adult population, too, to put
a finger to their brow as a superstitious act of self-protection.
Thus, it may be seen, oral lore is subject to a continual process of wear and
repair, for folklore, like everything else in nature, must adapt itself to new
conditions if it is to survive
Sources of the Rhymes
The children themselves often have a touching faith in the novelty of their oral
acquisitions. Of the rhyme,

House to let, apply within,
Lady turned out for drinking gin,

which we have collected from twenty-four places in the British Isles, also from
South Africa, Australia, and the United States, and which was recorded as
traditional in 1892 (G.F.Northall, English Folk-Rhymes, p. 306) an Alton girl
remarked: Heres one you wont know because its only just been made up. Of
the couplet,

Mrs. Mason broke a basin.
How much did it cost?

lines which are the recollection of a counting-out formula recorded in 1883
(G.F.Jackson, Shropshire Folk-lore, p. 573), a Birmingham child vouched the
newness because it was named after a teachers wife. Children are, in fact,
prone to claim the authorship of a verse when they have done no more than
alter a word in it, for instance substitute a familiar name for a name unknown
to them; and they tend to be passionately loyal to the presumed genius of a
classmate, or of a child who has just left their school, who is credited with the
invention of each newly heard composition. [A similar process takes place with
jokes; children will offer the oldest jokes as new inventions.] The unromantic
130
truth, however, is that children do not go on inventing games out of their heads
all the time as Norman Douglas believed; for the type of person who is a
preserver is rarely also creative, and the street child is every bit as conservative
as was George VI with his lifelong preference for the hymns he sang in the choir
at Dartmouth. The nearest the normal child gets to creativeness is when he
stumbles on a rhyme, as we have overheard: an 8-year-old, playing in some
mud, suddenly chanted Stuck in the muck, stuck in the muck, whereupon his
playmates took up the refrain, Stuck in the muck, stuck in the muck. A 10-
year-old added:

Its a duck, its a duck,
Stuck in the muck, stuck in the muck,

and the group echoed this too, and went on chanting it, spasmodically, with
apparent satisfaction, for above an hour, so that it seemed certain that we were
in at the birth of a new oral rhyme. But when we asked them about it a week
later they did not know what we were talking about. The fact is that even a
nonsense verse must have some art and rhythm in it if it is to obtain a hold on a
childs mind, although exactly what the quality is which gives some verses
immortality is difficult to discover.
Where, then, do the rhymes come from? The origins of only a few can be
traced, but these few may be indicative. The popular verse,

Sam, Sam, the dirty man,
Washed his face in a frying pan;
He combed his hair with a donkeys tail,
And scratched his belly with a big toe nail,

known throughout Britain in a multitude of versions (this one is from a 13-year-
old Boy in Pontefract) is a relic of a once famous song Old Dan Tucker
composed by the black-faced minstrel Daniel Decatur Emmett, of Dixie fame,
and printed in 1843. [A] further Ethiopian legacy is the little tongue-
tripping verse,

I saw Esau sawing wood,
And Esau saw I saw him;
Though Esau saw I saw him saw
Still Esau went on sawing,

sometimes sung by children when skipping (this version from an 8-year-old
Alton girl) which is descended from the lyric I saw Esau kissing Kate written
by Harry Hunter for the Mohawk Minstrels sometime about 1875
This process of children adopting or adapting popular songs for use in their
games continues, of course, in the present day. Such songs as The more we are
together, Show me the way to go home, Horsie, horsie dont you stop, and
The Lambeth Walk (now sometimes Lamberts Walk) have a playground
existence today far removed from their dance-band origins. More recently, the
American song Music! Music! Music! (Put another nickel in) written by
131
Stephan Weiss and Bernie Baum, and published in 1950, seems assured of
immortality, for both the original lyric, and juvenile extemporizations of it
extolling film stars or denigrating teachers, can still frequently be heard in the
playground, seven years and a whole school-generation after its original
publication. [My remembrance here of a US example is of Lady of Spain.] It is,
perhaps, only to be expected that the most memorable verses should turn out to
be the work of professional humorists and song-writers.
Regional Variation
If the uniformity of schoolchild lore, to which we have so far been witness,
was the whole story it would of course only be necessary to study one
locality to know what goes on in every locality; and no matter how
comprehensive and virile the lore was found to be, if it was the same
everywhere, it would confirm the apprehensions of those who suppose that
standardized education, mass entertainment, and national periodical
literature have already subverted local traditions and characteristics.
Happily our tale is not yet complete. Two distinct streams of oral lore flow
into the unending river of schoolchild chant and chatter, and these two
streams are as different from each other as slang and dialect. The slangy
superficial lore of comic songs, jokes, catch phrases, fashionable adjectives,
slick nicknames, and crazes, in short that noise which is usually the first
that is encountered in playground and street, spreads everywhere but,
generally speaking, is transitory. The dialectal lore flows more quietly but
deeper; it is the language of the childrens darker doings: playing truant,
giving warning, sneaking, swearing, snivelling, tormenting, and fighting. It
belongs to all time, but is limited in locality. It is so timeworn indeed that it
cannot be dated, and words of which Shakespeare would have known the
meaning, as cog, lag, and miching, are, in their particular districts, still
common parlance; while the language which children use to regulate their
relationships with each other, such as their terms for claiming, securing
precedence, and making a truce, vary from one part of the country to
another, and can in some instances be shown to have belonged to their
present localities not merely for the past two or three generations, but for
centuries.
Conflicting as are the characteristics of these two types of lore, the one
rapidly spreading from place to place and having a brief existence, the other
having a prolonged existence but rarely spreading, it is not impossible to see
how they subsist together. When a child newly arrives in a district any slang
expression he knows, any jokes or tricks, or any new skipping or dipping
rhymes he brings with him, are eagerly listened to, and if found amusing, are
added to the local repertoire, and may eventually supplant similar pieces of lore
already known. But the local children, while willing to enlarge their store of
jokes and rhymes, will not consciously brook any alteration to what they
already know. The new child must learn, and very quickly does so, the
legislative language of new playmates. He must learn the local names for the
playground games, and the expressions used while playing them. Unless he does
this, he will not merely be though peculiar, he will not be understood. A child
132
who moves from Lincoln and cries Screams for mercy in Leicester will find
that he receives no sympathy, since the accepted truce term in Leicester is
Croggies. Similarly a 12-year-old Spennymoor girl who says,

When the rope is turning away from the nobby-ender it is lupey-dyke.
When the nobby-ender is out he takes the laggy-enders place and the
laggy-ender takes the foggy-enders place so that the foggyender becomes
the nobby-ender.

will be thought out of her mind if she says this in the hearing of a Spitalfields
girl, although both children in fact adhere to this practice while skipping, and
both may skip to the same rhymes. [US terminology includes, for jumping rope:
steady swingers, hot peppers, and double Dutch; and, for other games, terms
for calling in players at end of a game or part of a gameallie, allie infree;
and, for claiming safetymy gools, 123; for starting hide and seek, after
counting saying Anyone around my gools shall be it.]
This regional variation in the childrens dialectal lore has been as unexpected
as the slavish uniformity of their slang lore; and when the childrens customs
and superstitious practices are examined, in particular their calendar customs,
the regional differences are remarkable. While some children roll eggs at Easter,
or nettle the legs of classmates on the twenty-ninth of May, or leave little gifts
on peoples doorsteps on St. Valentines Day, or act under the delusion that they
are above the law on the night of 4 November, other children, sometimes living
only the other side of a hill, will have no knowledge of these activities. It is not
perhaps of much consequence that in different parts of England children have
different ritual ways of disposing of their milk [baby] teeth, that there are more
than sixty names for the illegal pursuit of knocking at doors and running away,
that in some places walking under a ladder can be lucky and seeing a black cat
can be unlucky, and that some children makes fools on the first of May with
more zeal than on the first of April; but the childrens loyalty to local customs
and forms of speech is at least evidence that the young in Britain do not take as
their authority only what they hear and see on the wireless and television and at
the cinema.
[It may be helpful at this point to review briefly the somewhat complex
processes the Opies have described in this excerpt. They distinguish between
nursery rhymes, part of the literary culture of childhood, transmitted by adults
to children; and school rhymes, part of the oral culture of childhood,
transmitted by and to children. The Opies concern is with the latter. They claim
that children possess a culture, characterized by its:

1 transmission through generations in much the same form though with
some wear and tear
2 transmission of new lore within and between societies, a process that is
often rapid but also transitory
3 uniformity within and between childrens culture of different societies
as well as local variations that endure, do not spread to other localities,
but may be translatable in terms of one another.]

133
The Culture of Children 2:
Half-Belief
Outwardly the children in the back streets and around the housing estate
appear to belong to the twentieth century, but ancient apprehensions, even if
only half believed in, continue to infiltrate their minds; warning them that
moonlight shining on a persons face when he is asleep will make him go mad,
that vinegar stops a person growing no matter how young he is, that a bleeding
wart never stops bleeding and the person will bleed to death. They confide to
each other that a stone-chip picked up off a grave brings a curse upon him who
takes it; that a nose which is too long may be shortened by rubbing it with wet
grass on the night of a new moon; and that if a photograph in a frame is
dropped and the glass breaks, a painful accident will befall the subject of the
photograph. I shudder if I break a mirror, fearing seven years bad luck, says a
14-year-old Yorkshire girl; and a Radnorshire lad affirms, If you break a
mirror they say seven years bad luck to you. This is true in my family. With
simple faith they accept beliefs which have not changed since Shakespeares
day: that if a dog howls outside a house or scratches at the floor someone is
going to die in that house; that if owls screech at night it is a sign of death; that
if a person hears of two deaths he will assuredly hear of a third; and in evening
places where children meet the telling of each dark precept is supported with
gruesome instances. [Mark Twains Tom Sawyer comes to mind here.] They
begin to share the awe felt by Mole in The Wind in the Willows when Ratty
warned him of the hundred things an animal had first to understand before
entering the Wild Wood:

Passwords, and signs, and sayings which have power and effect, and
plants you carry in your pocket, and verses you repeat, and dodges and
tricks you practise; all simple enough when you know them, but theyve
got to be known if youre small, or youll find yourself in trouble.

It is such dark thoughts which cause children at Brierley Hill in south
Staffordshire to hide their little fingers when an ambulance goes by for fear that
their finger-nails will drop out; which induce children in the Gower Peninsula to
spit when they see a dead animal and cry:
134
Fever, fever, stay away
Dont come in my bed today;

and which lead children in Scotland when they see a large black slug or snail to
spit on it, declaring, Its no ma Dye, an its no ma Grannie (reported from
Ballingry, Cowdenbeath, and Gartcosh, near Glasgow). And one wonders how
many bishops are aware of the jockeying for places which goes on beforehand
among the candidates for confirmation when word gets about that to be
confirmed with the bishops right hand is lucky, but to be confirmed with his
left hand means bad luck.
Juvenile Attitude to Folklore
The beliefs with which we are concerned here are those which children
absorb through going about with each other, and consequently mostly
involve happenings out-of-doors; people met in the street, objects found in
the road, and mascots carried with them to school. We find, what is
understandable, that the younger schoolchildren treat the beliefs and rites
of their companions more seriously than those practised by their parents
and grandparents; although it is noticeable that later (14-years-old
onwards) the child-to-child superstitions tend to be discarded, along with
the rest of the lore, and even forgotten, while the more domestic
traditions, which are passed down in the family, are mentioned with
increasing frequency.
When asked how much they believe in their superstitions most children
will say (as they feel they are expected to say?) that all superstitions are
silly. But it may, in passing, be observed that few people, adult or juvenile,
are above doing what is silly. As a 10-year-old Nottinghamshire girl
candidly confesses, If I want to have good luck I do very funny things, and
she goes on to say:

First of all I close my eyes and wave my arms about ten times.
Secondly I always wear my vest [undershirt] inside out and my
jumper [sweater] back to front. I did that in the selection examination and
that brought good luck. When I heard the results that I had passed, as
soon as I got home I changed everything round; if I had not done it would
have brought bad luck.
If I am going in for a competition I do not do that, I put a glove on
my left hand and suck my other hand at night. I did that once in a
Competition and I won first prizea bike.

Further it may be remarked that when a practice or omen is termed a
superstition it is generally one which is not believed in by the person so
referring to it. When collecting this lore from children we have not asked for
superstitions as such, but have inquired after the magic practices they knew,
or asked for their ways of obtaining luck or averting ill-luck.
Many charms and rites are of course practised by children just for fun,
because everybody else practises them, and it is the fashion. Other charms,
although recognized as being probably silly, are repeated because they also
135
feel that there may be something in it. Others, again, are practised because it
is in the nature of children to be attracted by the mysterious; they appear to
have an innate awareness that there is more to the ordering of fate than appears
on the surface. And yet other practices and beliefs are undoubtedly so taken
for granted that it is not appreciated that the custom or belief is in fact
superstitious.
The childrens beliefs do not, as may first appear, consist of a miscellany
of unrelated scraps. Looked at all together they are seen to fall into a
definite pattern, and the dominant motives which emerge in the things that
they feel bring good luck or evil, e.g. dislike of seeing the backs of objects
(ambulances, mail vans, hay wains; also blind men, men with wooden legs,
and nuns); reluctance to anticipate events, for instance not putting water in
a jar before the first tiddler [tiny fish] has been caught; and love of
safeguards as shown in their addiction to lucky charms, scapegoats, and
finger-crossing, probably satisfy psychological impulses as well as following
the path of tradition.
Ambulances
An understandable instance of a custom attaching itself to an inanimate
object is the hospital ambulance fetish. Amongst children throughout
England the sight of an ambulance passing in the street instantly evokes a
self-protective charm. I was bringing a bunch of orphans to a party in my
car yesterday, reports a Manchester teacher (1953), when one of them saw
an ambulance. Touch your collar and look for a four-footed animal, she
commanded the rest; and this practice appears to be commonplace, the rite
very often being decreed in rhyme
Omens on the Way to School
Superstitious regard for some objects, such as beetles, bridges, cats, hay
carts, ladders, falling leaves, lumps of coal, and cracks in the pavement, seems
to extend to every corner of Britain; and these beliefs, and the customs which
accompany them, are far from being the fast perishing relics they are
sometimes assumed to be.
It must always be remembered that although to an adult a particular belief
may seem like a coelacanthine survival from the past, to the schoolchild who
learns it from his mate the belief is a novelty; it is something just learnt, and
often excitingly full of possibility for his immediate welfare.
When a child steps out of his home to go to school, whether he lives in a
remote hamlet or in one of the backstreets of a great city, he is on his own, and
looking after himself. The day ahead looms large and endless in front of him,
and his eyes are wide open for the prognostics which will tell him his
fortune
136
[At this point the Opies provide details about specific beliefs and practices that
for the most part seem more typical of Britain, or perhaps of rural Britain, than
of the US. They are related to beetles, birds, blind men, bridges, cats, chimney
sweeps, cross-eyed women, crows, cuckoos, dogs, dung, funerals, hares, hats,
hay carts, horses, ladders, lady drivers, ladybirds, leaves, magpies, mail vans,
money-puzzle trees, nuns, oil patches, rabbits, and rain, the following two
being perhaps more familiar to US readers:

Rain, rain, go away,
Come again another day
Its raining, its pouring
The old mans snoring;
He got into bed
And bumped his head
And couldnt get up in the morning.

as well as rainbows, sailors, snow, spiders, trains, and wooden legs. The beliefs
and practices of children in many different societies could generate lists of
omens on the way to school that, while differing in particulars, would be the
same kind of list.]
Lines on Pavements
One of the inexplicables is the amount of lore which has become associated
with flagstones, and apparently all children, when the fever is on them, are
punctilious about the way they walk along an ordinary pavement. To step on a
crack in the stone, or on the lines between the stones, is invariably taken to be
unlucky, and the precise catastrophe which will follow is very often known to
them, for instance: You will get your sums wrong (Ipswich); Your hair will fall
out (Loughton); You will fall downstairs next day (Manchester); You will
break your spine (Newcastle upon Tyne)
4
.
In Lancashire and adjacent parts of Cheshire and the West Riding, children
have the quaint saying:

If you tread on a nick
Youll marry a brick (or a stick)
And a beetle will come to your wedding.

Around Sheffield, they chant:

If you stand on a line
Youll marry a swine;
If you stand on a square
Youll marry a bear.

The fable that sillies who step on lines will be chased by bears when they
reach the corner of the road, unforgettable in A.A.Milnes When We Were
137
Very Young (1924), is recounted throughout southern England where it is
variously asserted: bears will bite you, they will squeeze you, they will
eat you. It is also exotically reported that snakes will chase you home
(Norfolk), or that you will marry a snake (Manchester); that youll drown
in the sea (Loughton); that each time you tread on a line you kill a fairy
(one boy, Peterborough) or that you walk on the old mans toes (Oxford).
Old Nicks perhaps?
Further sayings, apparently not peculiar to any locality, associate the lines
with broken crockery. In Ballingry, Fife, if a person treads on the lines he is said
to be breaking Gods plates. In Aberdeen if he walks on cracks (as distinct
from lines) he is breaking the devils dishes, or his mothers best china dishes,
and the more cracks he walks on the more he breaks. In parts of East Anglia,
if a child steps on lines or cracks, or slips off the kerb, it is said he will break his
mothers best teapot.
In Peterborough and Swansea the mothers attitude is reflected in the jingle:

Tread on lines your mothers kind;
Tread on squares your mother swears.

And in Portsmouth it is reported that children also take notice of the water-
courses across the pavement:

If you tread on a crack, or tread on a spout,
Its a sure thing your mother will turn you out.

In America pavement lore appears to be more uniform than in Britain.
Recordings made in recent years in Illinois, Iowa, New Jersey, Louisiana, New
York State, Ohio, and Texas, have all been similar. The child says Step on a
crack, and continues Youll break your mothers back or Youll break your
grandmothers back, or Break the devils back.
Finding Things
It is not usually considered enough merely to find a lucky object. If the
finder is to benefit by his encounter he must go through prescribed actions
with his find, step on it, threaten it, spit on it, implore of it, or, very
often, throw it away. The only exception seems to be the four leaf clover,
the discovery of which appears to be felt singular enough to be lucky in
itself
[At this point the Opies provide a variety of British examples related to finding
buttons, cigarette packets, and four leaf clovers, noting that Sir John Melton
records an example of the latter in his Astrologaster, 1620, p. 46 (cited by
Brand): If a man, walking the fields, finde any foure-leaved grasse, he shall, in
a small while after, finde some good thing; and of finding coal, coins, feathers,
horseshoes, pins, rings, sticks, and stones. US examples include some of the
above as well as a penny (finding it and picking it up will bring good luck; not
138
picking it up will bring bad luck); and an eyelash (upon which one can wish and
then blow it away).]
It will be noticed that to find any of the above objects is potentially beneficial.
But there are three things which if found should never be picked up: a needle, a
broken knife, and a flower dropped by somebody else. To meddle with these
means ill luck, a quarrel, or even death. It is unlucky, too, to find a dead bird (a
boy from Stock in Essex particularizes a dead pigeon). A girl in Canobie,
Dumfriesshire, says: When we see a dead bird lying on the road we spit on it so
that we dont get it for our supper.
Luck in Examinations
Naturally the approach of an examination makes children doubly conscious
of omens. They become watchful for anything held to be significant, and
take notice not only of the everyday prognostics, but of some auguries
specifically belonging to the occasion. Thus at Ecclesfield a boy says: If you
have a dream about a horse before the exams you will have bad luck. At
Hampstead, and doubtless elsewhere, children believe that to have an
argument before an examination is bad luck. And at Lydney, by the river
Severn, they consider it unlucky if, when going into examinations, there are
no seagulls flying around outside. In some places children even take note of
whether, when they enter the examination room, the master is smiling (a
propitious sign), or who it is they walk in behind (they like to walk near a
prefect or an entrant of known ability). And they are as careful as possible
about their choice of desk. (At one school, at least, when the desks are
being set out number 13 is omitted, for no child would willingly sit at it.)
[Compare with US adult beliefs about the number 13; do buildings taller
than twelve stories have a thirteenth floor?]
More actively they bring a piece of magic with them: a pet small toy or
mascot, a woolen, wooden, glass, brass, or china likeness of a pig, elephant,
frog, dog, owl, black cat, white horse, or silver horseshoe, a Jack o
Lantern, Joan the Wad (popular in Wales), or other lucky image such as
fancy gift shops regularly sell, but perhaps purchased on some special
occasion with happy or mystic association, such as at a fair, or from a gipsy
or Indian pedlar at the door. [A US college example is provided by Kate
Miller: My exam-taking practices at Wellesley College (class of 1989)
included wearing as many clothes with karma as possibleborrowed
clothes, gifts, and anything with a Wellesley insignia. A typical exam outfit
might include a boyfriends fraternity jersey, Wellesley sweatpants and class
ring, earrings from a friend, jewelry from parents, scarf from brother and,
to top it all off, a Wellesley sweatshirt. A sweatshirt without a hood could
be worn inside-out so that the luck in the school logo would rub off on the
wearer. I also slept with the most relevant book underneath my pillow the
night before.] The mascots are set up in front of them on their desks (and
tactfully ignored by the examiners), or are worn as brooches or pendants.
Sometimes they wear a sprig of white heather, or holly, or an ivy leaf, or
have steel pins stuck into the lapel edge of their coat or a safety pin
fastened in the hem of their dress. Or they bringsecreted in grubby
pocketstalismans of personal but no intrinsic value: prized round stones,
139
polished stones, white stones, stones with holes in them, champagne corks,
mother of pearl shells, pieces of coal (very common), treasured lumps of
wood, rabbits paws (surprisingly often), and sharks teeth. Also, very
frequently, they have special coins: coins with holes in them, coins which
have been much polished, halfpennies with ships on, farthings which are
bent, and silver coins, particularly new ones.

It is supposed to bring good luck during an examination to have in your
pocket a piece of coal, a silver three penny bit, or something silver with
the present years date, e.g. 1952 if the examination was tried this year.
Girl, 14, Aberdeen

I think a silver sixpence is very lucky. If you were going in for an
examination you might keep a silver sixpence in your pocket so that you
might pass the exam, but some people say the sixpences should be very
new sixpences, they should not have been used and they should have been
new from a bank. Then people think you will have a good chance of
passing.
Girl, 12, Aberystwyth

They are particularly conscientious about bringing charms to the 11-plus
examination, the scholarship as they call it, which determines whether they
shall go on to a grammar school [like a US college preparatory course] or to a
secondary modern [like a vocational school]; and it may, perhaps, be reflected
that the grammar school children (the children who were successful in the
examination) are more likely to be superstitious than secondary modern school
children, for children at grammar schools are children who have found that
lucky charms work. [It is noteworthy that lucky charms are not simply accepted
but are indeed in some sense tested in much the same way that common-sense,
everyday beliefs generally arenot scientifically but pragmatically, in terms of
what works. I used to carry a lucky silver dollar, but once it was stolen I never
replaced it, for who could believe in a lucky piece that couldnt even protect
itself?]

My mother has always treasured a little brass owl. On the day I went to sit
the scholarship I took the little owl and wrapped it up in a handkerchief in
my pocket for luck hoping it would bring me luck and when the results
came I found it had proved its worth. I also wear other lucky charms such
as a black and gold poodle or a lucky black cat.
Girl, 11, about to go to a grammar school in the West Midlands

A lot of boys around our school place most of their luck on wearing small
things of a girl friend they know, articles such as silk scarves, small lace
handkerchiefs, or a ring or a charm. On Thursday the llth of April I was
not wearing my friends ring (in which I place my luck) and at school in
the morning I broke the schools gramophone.
Boy, 15, at a northern grammar school

140
I have a circular piece of red glass which I think is lucky because I take it
to exams with me. I took it to the scholarship exam for the grammar
school and I passed. I also took it to the A.T.C. exams and I have passed
them all. I think it must be lucky although I found it in a stream.
Boy, 14, at a Yorkshire grammar school

Even during the examination some children are not happy unless they can
entice the correct answers on to their papers by means beyond the ordinary
power of nature. They put their faith in new pencils which have never written a
mistake; they clasp their thumbs (this is very lucky, says a Brixton boy); they
cross their fingers or touch wood that an answer they have written down is
correct (there is prolonged finger-crossing and wood-touching while they wait
to hear the examination results); and a trick some of them have is to keep their
legs crossed during the examination. A teacher at Portsmouth, who was having
considerable trouble with collapsible desks during an examination, says that
when she at last demanded of a girl why she would keep sitting in such
discomfort with her knees bumping up under the flap, was told that the girl did
not think she would pass the examination unless she maintained this position.
Luck in Games
In their games, as in their work, it sometimes seems to children that it is more
necessary to have luck than to have skill. Young marbles players, in particular,
who on one occasion are able to hit their opponent out of the ring every shot,
and on another, for no reason which is rational, cannot knock a shottie
however hard they try, easily become prey to strange thoughts. I started on
Monday and had two days of good luck, reports a 14-year-old, then on
Wednesday I played with a green marble and it proved itself very unlucky
because I never won a game. Now I never play with a green marble because I
think they are unlucky.
In some places marbles players are addicted to charms. At Stoke-on-Trent
they call out:

One, two, three,
Lucky, lucky, lucky,
Four, five, six;

and in East Orange, New Jersey:

Roll, roll, tootsie roll,
Roll marble, in the hole.

Very frequently they practise what, in the old days, would have been called
witchcraft, and today is known to the sophisticated as Gamesmanship;

If you are playing marbles and you want to win, you put a cross in front of
the hole with red chalk and shout Bad luck! and the person who is
playing with you gets confused and misses the hole.
Boy, 10, Birmingham
141
In Nottinghamshire, when another boy is near our marble and it is his shot we
draw a ring round it (Boy, 10). In Dumfriesshire, if you make marks with your
heel round your marble the person is said to miss (Boy, 12). And in Swansea
when a child is losing at marbles he cries the disconcerting supplication: Black
cat follow me, not you.
Casting spells is not, however, confined to marbles players. In any game in
which a ball is used, says an 11-year-old, when a person is shooting and we
want him to miss we say: Abracadabra, wall come up! and somehow the ball
seems to miss. In Monmouthshire, when girls are playing hopscotch, if
someone stands on a line of the scotch while another is hopping it brings her
bad luck. In Swansea, when children reach the same point in a game as their
rival, to bring themselves extra luck they say:

TippetGood luck to meBad luck to youNo back answers.

And if, in a game such as skipping, a girl is doing badly, to regain her luck she
chants:

Touch wood, no good;
Touch iron, rely on.

In Essex, in similar pagan manner, if a boy has eventually achieved his object in
a game, he spits on the ground, or on whatever has baulked him, in revenge for
his past failures. In Essex, also, children spit behind an opponents back as a
method of bringing bad luck upon him.
In Newcastle to win a toss children call Lucky tails, never fails. In
Peterborough it is held that if a player counts his fagcards during a game he is
bound to lose. At Knighton to bring luck in a race children customarily hold a
piece of grass in their hand. And in Alton to obtain a three when dicing, or to
bring luck when turning up a third playing card, one group of youngsters, well
known to us, have taken to chanting, Lucky three, bring luck to me.
Yet childrens main efforts to affect a game by infernal means are
concentrated on hockey and football. Mascot carrying is universal:

At a football match each side has a mascot. The mascot can be a doll, an animal,
a midget, or a young boy. This mascot is regarded as it might bring good luck.
Boy, c. 13, Monk Fryston

If a football club has a lucky mascot and it is forgotten to be taken to a
match I believe that they will lose, and I believe that the same thing will
happen at school sports.
Girl, 14, Tunstall

I know of a footballer who earned the name of Corky because he always
carries a champagne cork in his pocket when playing.
Girl, 15, Forfar
Sometimes the charms are carried not only to ease the way to victory but for
personal protection:

142
When I go out to play football I always wear on my pants a little charm
(an elephant). On my boots I put a piece of red cloth between my laces
and I never get hurt.
Boy, 13, Featherstone

And sometimes more than totemistic methods are employed. It appears to
be not uncommon in the changing-rooms before an important match to
hear a captain, when briefing his team and wishing them luck, direct them
to wear their stockings inside out to make victory more probable. [Similar
practices are common among members of US sports teams, both children
and adults.]
It is also considered propitious to wear odd socks. A Pontefract boy states:
Some boys when playing at football they sometimes wear two different
coloured socks. This, they say, brings them luck.
The association of witches with ill-dressing is still maintained in France
where a student informed one of our correspondents that any garment put on
inside out was a sign that the person was afraid of witches.
Courage
In nothing is sound psychology and ancient superstition more inextricably
entangled than in their preparations for a daring deed. To give themselves
guts when accepting a daretying-up door knockers, or standing on the
parapet of a bridge as a train passes underneathboys variously grit their
teeth, clench their fists, kick themselves on the shins, put elastic bands
around their wrists, or touch wood (usually our heads). Some boys
recommend finger crossing. If you are going to do a daring act you cross
your fingers for luck. You cross your fingers, says one boy, and cross
them as much as possible. [In the US crossing two fingers may be
considered lucky whereas crossing more may be unlucky.]
Very commonly they spit on their hands; the practice being either to spit on
the finger tips, or on the palms and then rub the hands together. Spitting on the
hands seems to give an attitude to courage, observes a 12-year-old.
In Southwark they spit in ritual fashion three times on the ground.
In Barnsley, Yorkshire, To bring courage, says a 12-year-old boy, find a
lucky stone and spit on it and throw it over your head and do not watch it land.
If you see it land it will bring cowardice.
When performing something which takes courage, reports a 14-year-old
boy from Romford, one makes the Lucky Walls Sign by touching together
your thumbs, and forming a big W with your thumbs and forefingers.
A number of boys also recommend counting. You count up to ten, saying, I
am going to do it, and then on the last number you do it. Close your eyes and
count twenty. Count twenty very slowly and stamp on left foot. Count
twenty very slowly and take two deep breaths. Hold your breath and count
twenty.
One boy recommends giving somebody a cherished possession to hold
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which he can keep if you dont manage to do it. Another recommends
throwing a cap or coin over the wall first, so that it is essential to climb over to
fetch it. A girl aged twelve says, Drink a glass of beer.
Other boys, noticeably the more broadly educated, favour Cou principles,
telling themselves: Ive got to do it and I will do it, If he can do it I can do it,
Come on old boy you must do it, think of your honour, or they pretend to
themselves that it is simple and not daring. This makes me succeed sometimes,
remarks a Brentwood boy.
One lad says, Trust to the Lord and He will get you there.
And before embarking on the rash act they exclaim: Here goes, Wish me
luck, Thumbs up, Lets get it over, Plucky-lucky, One can only die once,
or I like dandelions on my grave.
Notes
1 A Country Day-School Seventy Years Ago, Longmans Magazine, vol. xiii,
1889, p. 518.
2 The city child usually knows more games than the country child, for he has more
time to play them. The real country child, living in a village or on a small-holding,
is generally expected to do jobs around the home when he returns from school,
and once he has passed the singing-game stage, his play tends to be limited to
whatever free time there is at school. However, his knowledge of traditional
wisdomproverbs, dark sayings, and seasonal customsis correspondingly
greater.
3 Miscellanea of the Rymour Club, vol. ii, pt. ii, 1913, p. 69.
4 Dr. Fisher, Master of the Charterhouse, told Boswell [who wrote a biography of
Samuel Johnson] that in the quadrangle of University College Johnson would not
step on the juncture of the stones, but carefully on the centre; and according to Lord
Elton, General Gordon when walking along a pavement would zigzag in order to
avoid the cracks. [The Opies themselves thus provide data that half-beliefs are held
by adults as well as children.]
Concluding Note
The Opies suggest that half-beliefs are used by children to structure and make
sense out of their daily experiences. Rather than seeking to disprove such half-
beliefs, sociologists can fruitfully examine them for the functions they serve.
Many of the half-beliefs cited by the Opies appear to have their source in
situations where: 1) a course of action is contemplated that can be either
successful or unsuccessful, 2) the outcome is important to participants, and 3)
the strategies for achieving success are uncertain or ambiguous. Half-beliefs
step in to provide guidance.
The subjects around which childrens half-beliefs cluster suggest some of the
concerns that children have. Some of these concerns are specific to childhood
e.g. examinations; some are shared by adults and children, but adults may have
more resources available for explanation, e.g. safety, illness; and some concerns
are shared by adults and children and both hold half-beliefs related to them, e.g.
games of chance such as cards.
144
As with common-sense beliefs in general, half-beliefs are tested in an
informal, non-scientific fashion; those that work are kept; those that fail are
abandoned. The non-scientific character of the process by which they are tested
is evident in the limited data used as a basis for analysis (an object or practice
that is associated with luck on one occasion may be taken as lucky-in-general).
It is also evident in the role played by the desire for a belief to be true (or false),
desire substituting for a weighing of evidence. Objects and practices are treated
as lucky as long as their use is associated with luck, even when reason might
suggest that such an association may be accidental. Along with magical beliefs
and practices, people may engage in non-magical practices that are designed to
bring about the desired result (as when one carries a good-luck charm to an
exam for which one has studied) but success may still be attributed to the good-
luck charm.
Despite the Opies focus on children, it seems clear that half-beliefs are held
by adults as well and in very much the same kinds of situations. The difference
is that adults have a range of other resources for resolving ambiguitye.g.
science, religion, consultation with experts and professionals. The Opies
material provides a fruitful source for seeing the many commonalities as well as
differences between adults and children.
F.C.W.
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Chapter 11

Kids, Culture and Innocents
David A.Goode
Commentary
In this article Goode gives eloquent testimony to the existence of worlds
inhabited by those children considered damagedthe blind, the deaf, the
alingual, the severely retarded. The oft-made assumption that children labeled
severely handicapped do not experience the worldthat there is nothing
going on within themhas blinded us to their experiences. Goode brings those
experiences to light.
As Goode describes the knowledge he has gained from studying
damaged children, he raises issues that expand understanding of matters
considered earlier in this book. Recall, for example, in Chapter 1, the
Bergers citation of Aries claim that Childhood, as we understand and
know it today, is a creation of the modern world (p. 9). The Bergers
could be said to be claiming that in past history it was routine for children
to be denied childhood; it was not socially available, i.e. not a part of the
culture of the times; but that nowadays, particularly in technologically
complex societies, it is routine for childhood to be recognized as a distinct
phase of life. Goode, however, demonstrates in this article that childhood is
an experience still denied to some children. Such children may have no
access at all to the channels of communication and thus the culture of
children described by the Opies.
Just as some children are denied the experience of being a child, that
experience can be available to some adults. In her role of least adult,
Mandell in Chapter 4 could be said to have sought to enter the world of
childhood. Using research strategies similar in spirit to those of Mandell,
Goode has studied children who have been denied that opportunity and has
both documented that denial and discovered and described the worlds such
children do inhabit.
Goodes discussion of the wild boy of Aveyron reintroduces the topic of the
From Human Studies, 9 (1):83106 (1986). Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,
Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Reprinted by permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.
146
faultiness of the empty bucket (tabula rasa) assumption about children. He
shows that although the worlds of damaged children are in many respects
vastly different from the worlds of adults and of normal children, such worlds
indeed exist, can be described, and can be entered. Recognizing and studying
those worlds can provide us with understanding not otherwise available.
In Chapter 5 I argued that one can explore the role of child as a role, for
child and adult require each other to play their roles (p. 67) and To recognize
that child is a role is to suspend the assumption that childhood has some
absolute, real, transcendent existence beyond the social (p. 68). By
suspending that assumption and considering child and adult as social roles,
Goode has shown that those roles are available to only some of those who meet
the age requirements. Although Goode does not detail how the status of child
is assigned, his comments suggest that members of certain professions,
especially social work and teaching, may possess important social power to
grant or withhold this label. By renouncing the view that child is a biological
category, ascribed to all who fall within a similar age range, Goode comes to see
being in the world as a child as a social fact and an achievement, granted to
those who possess certain qualities and not granted to others.
F.C.W.

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky
So it was when my life began;
So it is now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
William Wordsworth,
26 March 1802
Current Views About Children and Adults
Reflecting upon written studies and my own observations of normal
children and of deaf-blind youngsters, seeing and doing things like a kid is not
equivalent to a set of biological attributes, i.e. being chronologically young and
physically small. It consists, instead, in socially organized ways of perceiving
and acting upon ones worldways which are social in origin and learned
through participation with others. Participating in kids culture is not
guaranteed to all who are young. Nor is it barred to those who have
accumulated experience, age and stature. Kids culture is a way of doing the
world which can be promoted, tolerated or repressed by adults. Likewise
adultness (perceiving and acting upon the world as an adult) is not guaranteed
by virtue of having matured biologically and is not something which is barred
to children. Tuli Kupferberg portrayed this insight graphically in his 1983
pictorial essay Kiddie Porna collection of photographs depicting children in
147
various military and paramilitary situations (guerrilla warfare, shooting hand-
guns, and so on). Certainly for the 8-year-old guerrilla in Nicaragua doing the
world as a child is at best an occasional affair if not an impossibility. In third
world nations some 40,000 children die daily of malnutrition or disease
(Newsweek, 27 Dec. 1982).
Although these are extreme cases of childhood deprivation, in America
poverty also deprives the young of being kids. So for that matter do the whims
and idiosyncrasies of some parents who, for a variety of reasons and employing
a wide range of unkind techniques, are extreme in repressing childhood in their
own progeny. Less extraordinary examples are also pertinent. In the middle
classes child athletes are burned out by the time they enter high school and
gifted children become imbeciles with high I.Q.s (to borrow a phrase from
Laing) even earlier. Of course, there are liberated places, areas in our society
where kids rule (notably playgrounds, street corners, recreational parks, and
videogame establishments). But adult culture encroaches on childhood
ubiquitously and insidiously. Big Brother is, after all, really big father (or at
least big adult).
The existence of these types of phenomena points to a variability of
participation in kids culture, a variability which is no less interesting in its less
extreme forms. Partly, it is this variability in participation which is for each of
us biographically ordered and which most of us face as we are hastened along
the path to adult reality. We are led to the goal sometimes gently and other
times forcefully. We proceed at unique biographical rates and with unique
qualitative experiences of both the losses and gains involved. We appear to
share the belief that this process is growing up but other than the physical
analog, it is not at all clear that we understand to what we commit ourselves by
using the term.
Children Who Do Not Become Kids or Adults
For better and worse some persons are denied participation in both kids and
adult cultures. The aetiologies of this denial vary and may involve fortuitous
circumstance, willful or unplanned neglect, organic deficits or some
combination of these. Many of these children are socially devalued and labeled
deviant. They are children who are described as retarded, autistic, mentally ill,
sensorily multihandicapped, chronically ill, social isolated and, in some very
rare instances, feral. Each category collects youngsters who, apart from any
organic insult or disorder they may have, have either experienced pathological
forms of interaction with adults or children, or a persistent lack of human
contact of any kind. Associated with many of their biographies is often a
chronic undersocializationan undersocialization resulting in pathological
behaviors which are often interpreted as organic in origin (see for a very recent
example Lewis et al., 1984 interpretation of stereotypy). This occurs almost
always in the case of the retarded child who resides in an institution. Similarly,
children diagnosed as autistic, mentally ill, multi-handicapped and chronically
ill, who experience pathological and/or limited contact with adults and with
other children, or who act in ways which are socially unacceptable, are often
interpreted to have primarily organically based deficits. That is, there is a
148
materialistic and atomistic bias evident in dominant interpretations of
behaviors of these children. Even children who are social isolates or feral are
often interpreted as having physical pathologies which account for behaviors
which are not resonant with dominant cultural posturings and expressions. I
want to suggest an alternate interpretation which is descriptively more
adequate to the phenomenon.
Because the attainment of being a kid is thoroughly dependent upon the
individuals participation in kids culture, it is possible to undergo the
physical processes of growth and maturation which we associate with
childhood without ever becoming a kid. This is what occurs with youngsters
who are chronically environmentally deprived, although the process is
somewhat convoluted since in the more severe cases the physical processes
of maturation are also affected. When there is an organic component to the
lack of participation, such as with the retarded or sensorily
multihandicapped youngsters who are limited in their capacity to interact
with other kids and are thereby denied full participation in kids culture,
there are often two levels to their predicament. The more severely afflicted
children often fail to become kids because of social deprivation which
occurs for reasons extrinsic to their organic deficits per se. That is, they are
socially devalued, ostracized and until very recently were often incarcerated.
In terms of the dominant materialistic bias in interpreting their behaviors,
these types of children are likely to be seen as mentally retarded,
neurologically damaged or, in current professional parlance,
developmentally disabled. In my own experience these particular
characterizations have primary relevance to a conception of life which is
adultcentric.
It will be my intention in the remainder of this paper to describe how it is
possible to come to less biased understandings of persons who fail to participate
in kids culture, and what these tell us about normal children and adults. I will
offer two reinterpretationsone regarding the autistic behaviors associated
with prolonged exclusive contact between children and animals and the other
of stereotypy noted in children who are deaf-blind and retarded.
The Wild Boy
One of the most interesting and revealing of encounters between youth and
adulthood is that of Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard and Victoire, the Wild Boy of
Aveyron (Itard, 1801; Mannoni, 1972; Malson, 1972; McNeil et al., 1984). In
a well-known and observationally meticulous series of notebooks Itard, an
eighteenth century French pedagogist for the deaf, documented his attempts to
habilitate un enfant sauvagea wild boywho had lived in the forests near
Caune for many years as part of forest society.
Though there have been many reports of feral (wolf, forest, ape) children,
few are in any sense genuine (Bettelheim, 1959). This is not the case with
Victoire. His presence in the forests can be historically established, with
reasonable certainty, through newspapers and other public documents
substantiating multiple encounters, captures and escapes over a period of seven
years. Itards journals, which are rightly recognized as some of the most
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punctilious human observations in the history of human sciences, are,
nonetheless, studies in pedagogical futility. When confronted with a child who
had successfully adapted to a natural, non-humanly ordered environment, Itard
seized the opportunity for his own professional advantage. He reasoned
Victoire to be the classically ideal student; a blank slate upon which he would
inscribe perfect knowledge through the perfect pedagogy. At least these were his
hopes when he first heard about the childhopes which, as we will see, lay the
groundwork for both his and Victoires fate.
In a bold and at the time noble experiment, Itard attempted to formulate
scholastic teaching methods which would allow Victoire to learn the cultural
knowledge he lacked. In these experiments, based upon the theories of his
teacher Condillac, the founder of what we recognize today as classroom
learning, Itard attempted to teach Victoire speech, writing, arithmetic, and
other academic skills, as well as social norms and proper behaviors. After many
years of hard work on the parts of both teacher and student, none of these goals
was achieved. Victoire failed to learn language and did not achieve what one
might call a satisfactory adjustment of an adolescent to urban society. He died
in his twenties substantially with the same developmental disabilities he had
when he first was captured and without having successfully acculturated, at
least by the standards of eighteenth century French society, to fully human
status.
The accounts of Itards lessons, of his devoted, repetitive and sometimes
violent attempts to provide Victoire with the culturally valued knowledge
and practices he lacked, are quite moving. They have inspired a movie and
over the years considerable commentary, not least of which concerns itself
with why a fine educator such as Itard could have failed so miserably with
the savage child. In a penetrating analysis by Mannoni (1972), Itard is
accused of creating a narrow cultural image of Victoire and unreflexively
employing completely adultcentered viewpoints in assessing his charges
competencies and deficits. Itard saw the child as the ignorant savage; that
is, as tabula rasa, a slate clear from disuse, an empty vessel waiting to be
filled up with knowledge. Despite the fact that this youngster may represent
one of historys consummate survival artists, that he probably was of
exceptional intellect and was reported by Itard to know a great deal about
what we might call survival arts (such as the sound of different foods falling
or, through smell, whether a dead bird was edible or not), his behaviors,
when judged according to rather conventional standards of French society,
were not considered evidence of human intelligence. In fact, Victoires
actions were decidedly maladaptive in humanly ordered social relationships.
He was treated as a very stupid person; he was, in fact, considered to be
retarded by medical authorities in Paris and was rescued by Itard from
incarceration in an institution for imbeciles.
In the social construction of stupidity, words such as adaptive and
maladaptive often conceal assumptions made about the relationship between
an individual and his social context. If we were to suspend some of these usual
assumptions with regard to Victoire, we can only wonder at the incredible
tenacity, intelligence and strength which the child must have possessed in
order to have survived in a forest community. Mannoni (1972) points out that
with survival exercises being common today, we can easily imagine a scenario
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wherein Itard would find himself in a situation in which his knowledge would
be inferior to that of Victoire. When judged by the criteria-employed-in-
action by the society of forest animals, survival, Itard would be literally
forced to become Victoires student. Such a fantasy was unthinkable for Itard.
And so,

Itard learned nothing from the savagehe made him into a blank
screen on which he projected his own knowledge. If we learn something
from reading him it is not really about the savage, nor about Itard, but
about what is revealingin their encounter. (Mannoni, 1972:41)

In part what is demonstrated in the journals is the repeated insistence that
Victoire conform to Itards chronically adult ideas about knowledge,
education, children and adults. Consistently, he ignored what the child
knew, misconstruing Victoires recreational walks through the forest as
irrelevant to his pedagogy; calling them play sessions. What was perhaps
the central task, to have learned from Victoire about human competencies
in a non-humanly ordered world, was assigned peripheral meaning through
its designation as play. Victoires skills were thereby euphemistically defined
out of existence. No wonder Victoire remained resistant to Itards
experiment. Instead of using what was meaningful to the child as starting
points for a tailor-made pedagogy, Itard remained faithful to adult
edificesthe precepts of his teacher and scientific method. Because he could
only see what he had been taught, and because the adult world was
embraced passionately by Itard throughout his encounter with Victoire,
what the child knew was specifically labeled as irrelevant. The important
question we must ask ourselves in considering the encounter between this
man and this child is, irrelevant to whom and under that circumstances?
When judged by the standards of the adult French middle class, Itards
viewpoint seemed sensiblejust as current medical views of organically
retarded children seem today. In the long run it was precisely this narrow
attitude about what was relevant (or competent or human) which
contributed to Itards failure and Victoires untimely end. In what must be
regarded as a classic meeting between an adult and a developmentally
disabled adolescent, we find no less than an exemplary instance of
adultcentric thinking dominating the education of the young. In Itards
creation of an image of Victoire as deficient, ignorant and savage, we
encounter evidence of the adult cultural narcissism so characteristic of
current approaches to kids. One cannot help but be impressed with the
practical cost of the lesson not learned by Itard. In many ways the incident
previews current human service failures with children who are culturally
ignorant.
Deaf-Blind Retarded Children
For a number of years I worked on a state hospital ward for deaf-blind,
retarded children. Although the feral character of these children was evident
from the outset, the application of Itards failure with Victoire to my own work
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with the deaf-blind was not an obvious connection to make. I had been working
in a research-volunteer capacity on ward for well over a year before the idea
occurred (for details of this study see: Goode, 1979).
The children I observed had been diagnosed as having Rubella Syndrome.
This meant that they were exposed to rubella virus in utero and suffered
multiple congenital disease effects (sequelae) including: deafness, bilateral
cataracts and other forms of blindness, central nervous system damage,
microcephaly, skeletal and dental abnormalities, malformations of the vital
organs, and numerous other pathologies. Concomitant with these organic
insults, the residents displayed profound behavioral delays in all developmental
areas: sensorimotor, cognitive, psychological and social. As an indication of the
degree of damage and delay, none of the residents had expressive or receptive
language of any kind. They did not speak, sign or spell, i.e. they were alingual.
Few had self-help skills worthy of mention. Most were not toilet trained and
could not eat or dress independently. They were regarded as the lowest
functioning children on the hospital grounds. They regularly engaged in
autostimulatory behaviors such as finger-flicking and rocking. Their
vocalizations consisted exclusively of animalistic gruntings and groanings.
Similarly, their posturings resembled those of animals rather than children.
They were sometimes described in animalistic terms by professionals and even
parents. In addition, because of their sensory multi-handicaps, for the most part
they acted in ways which were seemingly unresponsive to their surroundings.
These inmates of a state hospital also suffered the effects of social rejection
and devaluation. Their presence in such an institution was evidence not only of
severe organic insult but also indicated some biographically specific form of
familial or societal rejection. They were persons who even in initial
observations were evidently physically, psychologically and spiritually
damaged. They were alone, unhappy and suffering to a degree which is,
thankfully, uncommon in our society.
After six months on the ward I became convinced that, despite medical
descriptions and staff testimony to the contrary, these children possessed a full
range of human competencies. The fact that this went unnoticed had to do
largely with the dominant adult authored representations of these young
multihandicapped persons. These were exclusively pejorative since by any
standards, commonsensical ones or those employed in human services for the
retarded, the deaf-blind were about as helpless as persons come. When one
examined their medical files one could see numerous references to incapacity
and lack of skills and a complete absence of testimony about competencies.
They received proportionately fewer of the hospitals resources than other
populations; they were second class citizens in a second class society.
Because of this lack of regard for the childrens viewpoints (more
accurately, an incognizance that these children had valid viewpoints), the
existing habilitative programs were completely indifferent to the residents
evaluations and experiences. That is, their training programs (because they
are not considered educable their education was called training) were
based upon a series of adultcentrie judgments about what is desirable or
undesirable in life and how these might be brought about, in developmental
sequence, with particular children. These judgments evidenced the
missionary-like stance described earlier, perhaps more extreme because
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many of the medical staff did not even believe these persons had
experiences in the same sense as you or I. Through clinical assessments such
as I.Q. 10 (untestable) they were evaluated as tabula rasaalthough,
unlike Victoire, the deaf-blind retarded were without hope of ever being
filled up. The helping professions were so indifferent to the choices made
by these children that under the inspection of their adult (worse, scientific)
eyes, such choices were either invisible or insensible. Consequently, the
education looked more like animal training than pedagogy. There was such
an acute need for social recognition of these children as persons that the
first article I wrote about deaf-blind children dealt with recognizing client
choices and preference in such persons and the implications of this
recognition for their programming (Goode and Gaddy, 1976).
I became more convinced of the inappropriateness of the professional
stance as my tenure on the ward grew longer. It occurred to me, oddly
enough while preparing to teach introductory sociology, that these children
were very much in the position of Victoire, and that the adults on the ward
were much like Itard. After making observations of the residents for some
time, I began to realize the degree to which adults had incorrectly
understood these multihandicapped children. An even fuller appreciation of
these children emerged as I befriended one of the children and made an
attempt to empathize with her world view. Through unique research
techniques (mimicking, remaining passively obedient during interaction,
prolonged observation, video taping interaction and simulated deaf-blind
experiences) I discovered that many of her seemingly pathological behaviors
had a definite purposiveness and rationality. The more I saw things from
her point of view, the more I realized that because the staff and other
professionals had operated with culturally dominant adultcentric
conceptions of human competence, they incorrectly faulted these residents,
just as Itard had incorrectly faulted Victoire.
There were many kinds of competencies which were ignored. For
example, the staff seemed unaware of the fact that Christina, the child I
worked with, and other residents were excellent hospital residents. They
were institutionalized which meant (for better or worse) that they
understood something of the hospitals routines and rules. In the course of a
day I would witness many scenes which would confirm this. One very
common scenario involved pushing. The children would typically wait to
be taken from one activity to the next. They might be lying on the floor or
lost in some autostimulatory behavior when a staff member would come up
and fairly abruptly pick up a child and push her to her next in the wards
routine. If it was 11:30 a.m. and lunch was approaching, a child would be
picked up and pushed toward the bathroom (they were always taken to the
bathroom before lunch). The typical reaction, and the child had a wide
range of possible things she could do after being pushed, was to understand
the push (as I came to call it) as the communication it was intended to be.
The child would wander to the bathroom, find a toilet, do her business,
stick her hands in the running faucet after she was done, and walk to the
(locked) door to the dining area.
To me these actions were clear indications of active intelligence at work.
They showed that these children understood the act of an adult pushing them to
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mean go this way nowafter all, they undoubtedly had been pushed this way
all their lives. How else could one communicate go this way now to a person
without sight and language? The children assigned meaning to the interaction
accordingly. Their action also showed that they were cognizant of the wards
layout and the temporal ordering of activities associated with a pre-lunch
routine. While these are not terribly sophisticated skills, they are nonetheless
skills; adaptations to an environment which are sensible. The point here is that
a host of skills remained completely undetected because of the narrow
categories with which staff judged competence.
Even stereotypy, rocking and repetitive actions without any apparent
instrumental value, may be interpreted as institutionally adaptive behavior.
One of the prolonged periods of observing Christina taught me this. During
a thirty-six hour observation period during which I remained by her side, I
tried to empathize with her lifestyle in the hospital. When I did so I realized
just how much time she was left alone to her own devices to occupy her
time. The vast majority of the day this was her situation and she did not
have the external distractions of our culture such as television. She loved
the radio (Chris had good sound reception but did not process the sound in
a normal way) and whenever one was available she did her best to get close
enough to it to listen. She loved to rock to the music and built some
fantastic constructions from the available furniture to climb up to a small
radio kept, for obvious reasons, on a high shelf away from the hands of the
children. But in most places there was no radio and she was left alone to
provide herself with amusement. She rocked, played with her sight and
sound reception, masturbated and so on, not because of her organic deficits
but because she was bored and these were things that she could do by
herself and from which she received pleasure, reduction of anxiety or other
gratification.
Chris lived life in a total institution. Because of this the amount of
waiting time during a typical day was far greater than we can imagine. She
literally waited for everything and I developed a healthy respect for her
abilities to entertain herself in solitary pursuits. In fact, the substantive
similarities between Chriss inner voyages and those found in human
behavior which has been culturally articulated are astounding. Repetitive
rocking, recurrent vocalizations, enforced breathing, peak states of
excitementall aspects of her stereotypyare found globally in socially
organized pursuits of inner states of knowledge. This is particularly true of
religious rituals of primitive cultures although it may also be found in
advanced societies. Consider Reichian therapy, primal therapy, the Hare
Krishna cults, LSD communes and so on, So similar are some of these
culturally valued practices to achieve inner knowledge to those engaged in
by Chris that I often wondered whether there was a bit of hypocrisy
involved in the medical labeling and programmatic efforts to extinguish
these behaviors in her. There was at least a distinct possibility that the basis
difference between these was contextual and interpretive.
1
The
Mahareeshees followers make a living on street corners for doing much the
same as Chris and perhaps for much the same motivation. People pay huge
sums to Janovian therapists to engage in repetitive vocalizations and
rocking. But in Chriss case we are so ready, so primed, to see her behaviors
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as evidence of her retardation, that we mask her skills as symptoms.
Instead, they are ways for a deaf-blind child to occupy herself when she is
alone, perhaps even to explore inner states of consciousness. They are
without doubt activities of solitude of which we are generally ignorant and
irrespectful.
There was yet another kind of bias against recognition of Christinas
skills. These consisted of judgments which were seemingly obvious and
unbiased in character and required no justification. They were matters of
deep adult prejudice concerning generic relationshipsfor example, about
the relationship between persons and objects, or about how a person should
walk. A detailed illustration taken from notes made while viewing a
videotape of a music lesson which I was giving Chris will make my meaning
clear.

I am working with Chris sitting in front of the organ. Music is playing
loudly in the background. The initial fifteen minutes I am trying a
strategy from the deaf-blind curriculum of Perkins School. After an
initial familiarization period, I show her how to use various percussion
instrumentsa tambourine, a triangle, maracas and a rattle. With
each instrument there is a kind of ritual demonstration of its proper
use. For example, I would place a rattle in her hand, wrap my hand
around hers and motor her through a correct usage (i.e. shaking it to
the beat of the music). Another way to say this would be that I am
showing her the cultures recipe for the objects proper use. The arm is
placed here, the hand thusly, the shaking is coordinated to the musical
beat and so on.
During this part of the tape Chris appears decidedly bored. She does
not appear to concentrate on the actions of our hands but stares off into
the overhead fluorescent light and in various other directions around the
room. All of a sudden my wife enters the room and announces that she has
been hurt by one of the children. I go to her aid, dropping Chriss hand
abruptly, and leave the room. The camera remains running while I am out
of the room and the following occurs.
Chris brings the rattlethis particular instrument has a
corrugated wooden handle, smooth spherical container and tiny metal
cymbalsto her right eye (Chris can see with far more acuity in this
eye). She has it close to her eye, perhaps two inches away, and is
apparently inspecting its features. She begins to turn the rattle this
way and that in order to reflect the fluorescent light overhead. She
grasps all the different surfaces, tilting them and moving them closer
and further from her eye, trying to see what she can visually produce
with the rattle. After a minute of this she begins a whole series of
usages in and around the mouth. Different parts of the rattle are used
as tongue thumper, lip stimulator, teeth banger, and pushed against the
cheek. The bumps of the handle are rubbed rapidly across the front
teeth, the neck, then the breast. It appears to descend further to the
genital area (I cannot be sure from the tape but I have seen her do this
commonly when presented with new objects). After seven or eight
minutes of investigating the immediate perceptual possibilities which
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the rattle presented her, Chris drops the instrument on the floor in a
seemingly uncaring fashion without regard for its where-abouts or
breakability. Out of sight, out of mind.
While viewing this segment of the tape with a group of physicians we counted
more than twenty distinct uses to which Chris put the rattle during the eight
minutes she was able to interact with it without my interference. While her
activities were easily seen as wrong and as requiring correction, an alternative
and useful way to view the incident might be to ask, who is getting more out of
their encounter with the rattle, Chris or us?
Christinas inability to use the rattle correctlyto grasp the intentional
meanings behind the activities we associate with its appropriate employment
also credentializes her, providing her with a certain license in her relationships
with objects. This is a license largely barred to those who use rattles singularly
and in satisfaction of their intended and accepted mode of usage. Put in a
positive way, Chris was an alternative object reader; that is, a person who by
virtue of not knowing objects correct uses did things with them which were
completely inaccessible to most persons. Instead of equating objects with their
cultural recipes Chris grasped them with an openness unavailable to the
average person. Since these behaviors were evaluated as retarded by the
dominant standards, in our society it would appear that one basis for
recognizing stupidity is the superordinate ranking of recipe uses of objects. The
mode of employment which satisfies the use intended by the objects maker
forms a kind of ground against which other uses appear as pejorative figures.
This is what grounded the staffs conviction that Chris did not know how to use
instruments correctly.
This open-ended, horizontal relationship to things was only pathological
or abnormal by convention. From a more neutral vantage point it is
possible to see these activities as perfectly reasonable adjustments to her
sensory and cognitive handicaps. The mouthings of the rattle are
particularly understandable. The sensitivity of the lips and tongue, the
ability of the teeth to conduct vibrations, made Chris mouth her primary
perceptual organ. It seemed to be the receptor around which she could
reliably, at least judging from the longevity of these activities, organize
perceptual practices. While the naive observer or human services
professional might equate Chriss actions with the mouthings of an infant,
this would represent an improper faulting of these skills. Chris was well
practiced in her oral perceptions. Her handicaps had made her an expert in
the use of the mouth as the organ of perception and from this perspective it
is possible to see her behaviors as an alternative set of perceptual
practicesones which are more differentiated and complex than our own
oral perceptions. With respect to the oral exploration of our world, she was
a gourmand of everyday objects, virtually unprejudiced in her inquiries, and
would place almost anything she could get hold of in her mouth.
There were, thus, different levels of adultcentric thinking which surrounded
these children. On a mundane level there was a lack of recognition of a host of
adaptive interpersonal and institutional skills, On perhaps a deeper one, Chriss
behaviors could be seen as expressions of powerful commitments and
relationships which were inaccessible to normally seeing, hearing and thinking
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adults. These were actions which tapped into a reservoir which for most of us
has been channeled and funneled into those forms of experience which we
consensually agree is reality, but which for Christina existed relatively intact,
untouched by society. This was why, I think, the custodians sometimes referred
to these children as cosmic.
There would appear to be a striking parallel between Chris situation and
that which existed between Itard and Victoire. Most of Chris skills were
ignored, or judged as irrelevant, by her custodians and teachers. These
people, like the pedagogist-custodian of our feral child, examined
Christinas behaviors through the conventional standards of their society as
formalized and rationalized by their professions. Because such standards do
not allow for relative definitions of skills and competence, the teaching
systems based upon them did not recognize, and take advantage of, these
particular childrens abilities and interests. Most of the youngsters, like
Victoire, showed almost no progress in accessing adult-defined skills, Many
had behavior profiles, according to adult criteria, identical to those recorded
in clinical reports ten years before I met them; so dismal was the success of
habilitation efforts.
Through an appreciation of the Victoire-Itard affair we can understand
why the children failed to progress and what one might do about it. Itard,
and Christinas teachers, were not open to and could not passionately
embrace diversity in human beings and human experience. This is an ability
which is a sine qua non of valid human helping relationships. Because they
lacked this sensitivity and orientation, they were unable, to use a term
developed by Kielhofner (1983), to construct a relative understanding of
competence and intelligence. Though two hundred years and cultures apart,
both were adultcentric in their actions with their respective children. Their
helping efforts, instead of developing the innate human potentials of their
students, revealed their devout attachment to the substantive beliefs and
practices taught to them by their societies. The staff at the hospital learned
nothing from Christina; just as Itard failed to ever understand Victoire.
Their attempts at remediating the disabilities they perceived were equally
unsuccessful.
Because of the phenomenological style of my own research, because of my
cognizance of the dimensions of adult biases in judging these children, because
I was able, through a variety of techniques, to remain relatively nonjudgmental
about Christinas assessments about her world, I achieved better results from
my efforts at habilitation. For the first six months of my relationship with her I
was her super playmate, basically cooperating with any request she might make.
I used a strategy of passive obedience in which I physically allowed her to take
the lead in structuring our interaction. This proved a most beneficial (though
difficult to arrive at) stance. Once Chris knew that I was cooperative to this
degree, she initiated a huge variety of activities and exchanges in her terms. She
trusted me, perhaps loved me, and, I think, at some level understood how deeply
I appreciated her demonstrations.
During this period I learned her feelings and reactions intimately and
had clearly established a relationship with her in her terms. Using the
Itard-Victoire analogy, I began my teaching of Christina in the woods; at
least as deep into them as I could travel. Since initially in our relationship
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I had virtually forgotten about the attempt to habilitate the child,
preferring, instead, to allow her to show me the ways of her world, when
the shoe was put on the other foot she was cooperative (at least by ward
standards). For over a year, Christina had helped me to experience aspects
of the human Umwelt (von Uexkull, 1934) which had been socially
asphyxiated. She was unintentionally one of my most profound
instructors. This is probably why I experienced some success at
habilitation with her. I had become her student to become her teacher;
that is a truth I learned from my relationship with her, that every good
teacher is first his students student.
To repay the debt I attempted to provide positive growing experiences
which were both fair to Christina and to the adult-ordered hospital society in
which she lived. This involved not so much extinguishing negative behaviors
(such as rocking, etc.) as developing those choices she made which were
culturally valued; for example, making and listening to music or doing
gymnastics. By beginning pedagogy with what was valuable to her, Chris
experienced a blossoming which I could not have foreseen. In a short while
she even began to cooperate with requests on my part which did not have an
innate value or meaningfulness for her; for example, signing (in deaf sign
language) her name. She began to act more acceptably, I hesitate to use the
word normally. She was happier, I think because she knew inside that she was
no longer invisible. It was her appreciation of my recognition of her which
allowed for a more successful contact between the world of a seeing, hearing,
and speaking adult and that of a deaf, blind and alingual youngster. That such
success was short lived, ending with my departure from State Hospital, was
an unhappiness for both Christina and me. The implications for her life were
great. Without the benefit of her ally, she quickly regressed to a point where
her behavior was indistinguishable from that of other residents (Gaddy,
personal communication, 1982).
Kids, Innocents and Their Intimates
What can be learned from these two encounters and from the observations
of normal children interacting with adults? Can sociologists, teachers or, for
that matter, parents ever hope to understand their kids, developmentally
disabled or not?
Obviously the answer to this question varies historically, culturally and
biographically. From my own experiences with disabled children and their
families, from the recurrence of arguments such as those discussed earlier and
their most recent expression in sociology, it would seem that there are currently
reasons for hopefulness. In the case of the normal child who is participating in
kids culture, the possibility for genuine contact with adults rests upon two
facts: that all adult members have participated in such a culture and were
acculturated into adult belief-action systems; and that genuine cross-cultural
communication is always a possible achievement between persons of even
substantially differing cultures.
In the case of kids and adults in the same society, cultural differences
may not be as substantial as those of persons who come from different
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societies. The participation of our youth leaves a permanent door to kids
culture. There is a Peter Pan in each of us (in the epigram, child is father to
the man) which allows us to enter this door when we allow him life. Our
self-cognizance about doing this may be overt or tacit; i.e. we may or may
not be aware when we step into the world of kids. Sometimes we do so
conspicuously and ingenuinely, for example, in a managed way when we
act like children in order to control their behavior. Other times, in
activities which promote egalitarian contact, or in which we momentarily
forget the adult we are, we become the kid we once were; not in the sense
of playing at it, but actually being it. At these times we become the kid we
were, not as a managed presentation of self but as a relatively spontaneous
expression of self. The task for us adults is to recognize these occasions as
opportunities for mutual enrichment, for effective teaching and learning,
and to recapture how kids see and do things. Adult culture currently bears
a largely unrecognized and unanalyzed relationship to that of kids. A firm
conviction as a longtime student of kids culture is that by studying it we
stand to improve our educational attempts with children as well as our
understanding of our own activities. In this way we can become more
aware of adultcentrism and its negative influence on our pedagogy with the
young. We can also begin to appreciate the ways adultcentric thinking
victimizes those who participate in and promote it, regardless of age or size.
There are implications of these ideas which are important for the
scientific community. Most importantly, the study of kids culture deserves
explicit recognition as a bona fide topic of research for the social sciences
and one with direct bearing upon our understanding of many of its
traditional topicalities such as child development, the sociology of the
family, socialization, sociolinguistics, the sociology of education and special
education and others. Currently, the paradigms employed in our studies of
these phenomena are largely uninformed by the existence of kids culture
and because this remains true these topics await rediscovery in a less
adultcentric fashion. One cannot underestimate how significant such a
recognition and exploration is to scientists studying groups and institutions
involving children and adults. Those who are prepared to see and act upon
these possibilities will be able to re-enter traditional areas of social scientific
inquiry afresh and redefine domains of discourse. Thus the intellectual
cognizance of kids culture is as far reaching as one can imagine.
The study of kids culture also holds out tremendous promise to
practitioners in the helping professions who are concerned in a hands-on
fashion with children and child-adult relationships. Whether it be teaching
mathematics or understanding and remediating child abuse, an empirical
grasp of kids culture and its relationship to adult culture can only be of
immense practical value to those negotiating particular change-oriented
relationships. This is to say, I see tremendous utility for a science of kids
culture in human services of many types which involve children and child-
adult groups. In some isolated instances, when adults have allowed kids
culture to concretely organize the learning experience, for example, we have
already seen fruits of this approach.
2
Politically, the commitment to the study of kids culture is potentially to
the formal recognition and empowerment of kids. It is important that those
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who engage in studies of kids with liberating motives consider their efforts
within the overall history of children and their practices. Bearing such a
history in mind it seems highly unlikely that the dialectic between children
and adults will ever be resolved by any human efforts, intellectual or
otherwise. But the character and form of our relationship with kids can be
affected. Thus while it may never be possible to end the contradictions
embedded in child-adult interaction, through an understanding of them
which is fairer to the subdominant perspective it will be possible for the
scientific study of kids culture to become part of an overall political
process aiming at positive changes in the quality of life for kids. For
example, formal studies of the inclusion and disinclusion mechanisms of
kids culture would have immediate relevance to current mainstreaming
efforts for mentally, physically and emotionally handicapped children. [In
the next chapter Mandell reports on just such a study.] There are many
immediately researchable and pragmatically beneficial issues whose
exploration could have positive outcomes for all kids.
Regarding those youths who despite our best efforts fail to participate in
kids culture such as the multihandicapped, chronically ill or profoundly
retarded, there is also reason for hope. I maintain this despite the fact that
valid helping forms for such persons are blatantly absent in our society, and
that we are witnessing a growing intolerance in human services for these
types of children. There are even medical policies which legitimate their
euthenasia (Wolfensberger, 1981). For those who live at home there is a
usually a lack of appropriate services and available expertise. Yet, in spite
of those developments, perhaps in part in an attempt to counteract them, it
is possible to find a positive basis upon which adults might interact with
such children. As kids provide us with opportunities to reenter kids culture,
the acultural child presents an opportunity for the adult to appreciate his
own aculturality. Mannoni (1972:41) writes,

Natural man; savage; ignorant; pupil newly purged with hellebore; what
can they represent in their extreme destitution but subject separated
from knowledge that lies deep within each of us, the internal ignoramus
against which the autodidact and pedant wage arduous struggle in their
different ways?

When I consider my own encounter with Christina, my studentship with
her, it clearly was not kids culture about which I was learning. I had
always felt that Christina allowed me to reexperience my childhood, but it
is not till relatively recently that I have come to understand exactly what
that meant. Christina gave me a legitimate way to explore my own internal
ignoramus, to recontact that part of myself which lies beyond reach of
society, language or learning. She allowed me to recapture that part of me
which, as George Konrad (1974) wrote, remains more faithful to the
matter from which it came. Through her I was able to find again that
thoroughly human state in which all was possibility; an open ended,
undefined, what-it-can-make-of-you, what-you-can-make-of-it world which
was intoxicating and sustaining. It was a world in which there were no
lasting achievements, no possessions and no competition. It was a world of
160
mutually exploring whatever here-and-now possibilities presented
themselvesmusic, toys, trampolines, dressing, eatingall again novel,
open and without delineable horizons for interpretation. Lest I be
misunderstood, a kind of magic existed between us, certainly for me. While
I was helping Chris to learn some of the ways of adult society, I could not
help but feeling that what she gave me in return far outweighed my efforts
on her behalf It was a life-long gift.

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power but
for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever ardent,
sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is
so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility. (Sren
Kierkegaard)
Notes
1 One reviewer commented that the text would appear to equate Chris activities with
those of socially organized groups who engage in the pursuit of inner knowledge.
Because the procedures used to make sense of persons behaviors are part of the very
behaviors themselves, in the strictest sense I am not maintaining that Janovian
therapy and Christinas actions were isomorphic. What I am maintaining is that they
may be, and certainly I often felt from observing Christina that this was the case,
grounded in the same human potentialities and differing primarily in the way that
they are contexted and interpreted by others.
2 For an excellent example of a group doing precisely this, although without labeling
it as such, the history of LOGO, as documented in Seymour Paperts book
Mindstorms, suggests itself. Here, kids are allowed and prompted to solve problems
on their own and in conjunction with other children. Astounding pragmatic results
with normal and disabled learners are reported.
161

Chapter 12

Childrens Negotiation of Meaning

Nancy Mandell
Commentary
In this article Mandell explores an aspect of childrens worlds not dealt with in
previous articles: the ways that children interact with one another when they
are together. Her particular concern is with identifying and describing the ways
that children negotiate meaning, i.e. work together to figure out what is going
on, both from their own perspective and that of others. The negotiation of
meaning involves taking account of others in the social worlds that they inhabit
together.
I have deleted Mandells introduction, which is a review of the literature
relevant to her topic; references to these works are available in the bibliography.
In footnotes that accompany this deleted material, however, she cites two
important criticisms that have been addressed to previous studies of children:
Markeys (1928:151) assertion

that Piagets assumption that there is no real interchange of thought
[among children] is gratuitous. The only basis for saying that there is no
interchange is that the childs thinking is drawn from a common social
process but there is certainly interchange in this process.

and Lewis and Rosenblums (1975:1) argument that

psychoanalytic and Piagetian theories of human development have so
dominated research that they have led to a suppression of active study of
childrens early social behaviour other than that directed toward the
parents.

In contrast, Mandell describes children interacting in the social world as they
do it. She takes childrens perspectives seriously and displays the richness of
From Symbolic Interaction, Volume 7, Number 3, pages 191211. Copyright 1984
by JAI Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of JAI Press, Inc., Greenwich, Connecticut.
162
childrens efforts to understand and act in the social worlds in which they find
themselves.
Since Mandells work is based on that of George Herbert Mead (1863
1931), I here provide a few details about his idea of taking account for
those readers unfamiliar with his concept. Mead was concerned with taking
the attitude of the other and taking the role of the other, processes that
are necessary for one person to align actions with those of another. Being
able to put oneself in the place of othersliterally (e.g. by standing where
they were standing) or, more commonly, symbolically (e.g. by imagining
what they would say or do)is fundamental to being able to take account
of others and predict how their actions will articulate with ones own. By
establishing who the other is, what that person is up to, and how the other
is likely to act in response to ones own acts, one can plan ones own
strategies and actions. Mead saw the process of taking account as composed
of three parts: 1) deciding what features of the other are important; 2)
acting in terms of others on the basis of that decision; and 3) assessing or
evaluating the outcome.
Since Mead saw taking account as something that is learned, not
something that one is born with, study might reasonably begin with those
who are in the very process of learning how to take account of others.
Mandell therefore chose to study young childrens ways of taking one
another into account in their activities. Rather than viewing children as
incomplete or as objects of socialization, she focuses on them as
individuals engaged in activities. For this reason her paper is an appropriate
example of children in a childs world.
Given their [childrens] limited interactional experience, Mandell states,
many situations are not yet conventionalized (p. 175). How then do they go
about figuring out what is going on, what others are doing, and what they are
to do? Mandell answers this question by identifying four distinct ways of going
about acting in the world of others, ways that she terms involvement stances. A
preliminary introduction to these stances may prove helpful. In parentheses I
include terms that Mandell used in an earlier version of this paper, terms that
capture the stances in common-sense words:

1 self-involvement (doing it), observable when children are involved
with physical objects and their own actions and responses. Two
subdivisions of this stance can be identified, based on whether the
involvement object or activity is chosen by the child or by an adult.
2 interpretive observation and display (involvement from afar), evident
when children stand aside and observe others and their activities. This
stance includes staring, public announcements, direct invitations to
join an action, making initial overtures, and crowding.
3 co-involvement (working agreements), seen when children tentatively
join others for common activities.
4 reciprocal involvement (going the limit), evident when children share
definitions of the situation and common understandings.

All four of these involvement stances entail involvement with ones own self
and with the world beyond, including the world of others, but the kind of
163
involvement differs from type to type. Children are observed operating
within each of these involvement modes; no one mode is necessarily better
than or more advanced than another; each is appropriate to particular
circumstances.
In her work Mandell has discovered a number of issues that are of concern to
childrenissues such as privacy and joining groupsthat are sometimes
viewed as applicable to adults but not to children. Her data makes clear the
richness of childrens interactions when they are taken seriously in themselves
and not considered exclusively from an adult perspective. The sophistication
and complexity of childrens practices, documented so clearly by Mackay in
Chapter 3, are, on the basis of very different data, as clearly evident in
Mandells work.
F.C.W.
The Study
This study describes the processes by which children engage in what I call
negotiating meaning with other children in their daily interactions in school
settings. The essential Meadian question becomes one of documenting how
little children move from private, hidden meanings to publicly shared
understandings of involvement objects.
1
My focus is on the process by which chidren take the line of action of
the other. What is critical in the process is the basic self-other-object
relationship which encompasses all forms of interaction.
2
Do the children
understand others situational use of objects? Can the children act on this
understanding behaviourally (which is thus observable to a field worker) by
picking up the others act and working that line of conduct into ones on-
going activity? How do the children recognize, articulate, build upon and
negotiate these social objects in regulated ways? It is not role-taking per se
which is at issue, but rather interactional awareness, and the ability and
willingness to act on the actions of others.
How the children accomplish these interactional competencies provides
four qualitatively distinct types of involvement.
3
Visualized as a continuum,
these stances vary along two dimensions: the extent to which the act and its
meaning are private or public, and the extent to which the interacting unit
shares an understanding of the meaning of the act in which they are
involved. There is no underlying hierarchy or progression of logic as one
moves through these involvements. Rather these stances represent multiple
levels of reflexitivity and shifting degrees of interactional awareness.
Knowledge of the act-object relationship is crucial for grasping the flow of
the interaction. Each stance represents a situational and relational
production in that it assumes varying levels of familiarity and understanding
of the child with the acts of others.
4
Each social construction contains
elements of time, duration, intensity, mood
5
and complexity which bear on
its enactment. Regularities in production and presentation emerge then as
characteristic stances of engrossment.
164
The Setting and Methods*
This continuum of involvement is derived from participant observation
research conducted over a two year period on children aged 2 to 4 years. The
sample consists of sixty-two children from two different day care centres
observed for a total of 106 hours. The study is not concerned with day care in
any exhaustive sense. Day care centres represent convenient locations within
which to find regularly assembled groups of children. Both centres observed
serviced children aged 2 to 4. However, in most other physical and
sociostructural characteristics, the two centres differed.
The American centre, named Eastern, was located in a large, metropolitan
city in the Northeast. It was physically located in an old home, situated on a
well equipped, fenced-in yard. As a parent cooperative, the relationship
between the parents and teachers took on an adversary, rather than a
complementary nature. Three teachers cared for the seventeen children in the
toddler section. In all, Eastern serviced fifty-five children in both its day care
and after school program. A full-time director was employed to look after the
administrative and funding operations.
In contrast, the Canadian centre, named Northern, was located in a medium-
sized city in South Central Ontario. The centre was physically located in a one-
story building belonging to the public agency with which it was affiliated. As a
public, non-profit organization, the centre maintained an open, responsive
relationship with its users while daily decision-making remained in the hands of
the one supervisor and the two to three other teachers. The director of the
agency ultimately oversaw the financial operation, the hiring and firing of staff
and maintenance of the facilityall the tasks which the parents of Eastern
controlled. Northern serviced thirty-seven children using four teachers.
In terms of the content of the scheduled activities, Northern varied from
Eastern in only one important respect. The Northern teachers organized their
weekly art and circle activities thematically. Parents were informed of the
weekly theme (weather, snow, Christmas) by a sign on the door of the main
activity room. In spite of this difference in planning activities, the qualitative
distinctions of child-teacher interaction differed minimally between the two
centres.
I gained entree to Eastern in the late spring of 1977. I presented the director
and teachers of the toddler section with a field work proposal stating that I
wished to observe 2 to 4 year olds with the goal of gaining as complete an
overview of their daily activities as possible. I explained that this entailed trying
to see the centre through the eyes of the children with a view to understanding
how the centre works on a day-to-day basis. I included a copy of Joffe (1973)
and Denzins (1973) work on children as examples of the kind of participant
observation work which I intended to follow. A similar proposal and approach
was used at Northern in 1978 with an equally positive and quick response.
My role as participant-as-observer (Gold, 1969) included closely following
the children, interviewing the teachers and the directors, both formally and
* For further details of Mandells methods, see Chapter 4 in this book.
165
informally, attending the parent meetings and helping the teachers with
routine tasks when they were overloaded.
6
By following the childrens ways, by
doing what they did, and by becoming involved with them on a daily basis, I
was able to gain an understanding of their thoughts and actions. Specifically I
focused on small (two to three) groups of children and literally followed them
around their play space. If they sat in the sandbox making cakes, so did I. If they
scrambled up the climbers, crawled under the porch or chased each other
around the yard as Supermen, I followed. While I did not become a child, I
nonetheless became as minimally adult as possible. This required that I neither
judge nor evaluate their actions, nor act as a nurturing nor authoritative
teacher. I was a person who visited regularly and who was there to play with the
children. When the children asked me who I was, I replied that I wasnt a
teacher, just a visitor. While the children initially attempted to engage me in a
teachers role, with consistent refusal their demands subsided. They taught me
their openers, rules for entry, procedure and exit from interaction and I, in turn,
demonstrated who I was to be to them. Naturally the latter involved
considerable testing of my neutrality, confidentiality and physical dexterity.
However in time they either forgot I was there or engaged me fully in their
activities.
The data accumulated comes from two different centres in two different
countries. I analyzed the data separately and then, finding few negative cases
(Geer, 1967), collapsed them into one analytic mode. What emerged is a
depiction of role-taking as a processual and gradualistic ability displayed
within a childs particular interaction with others.
Stance One: Self-Involvement
The first stance, labeled self-involvement, includes self-reflective activity.
Following Meads triadic theory of meaning, the children are self-absorbed,
completely engrossed with themselves and the object of their involvement to the
exclusion of all others. This field work example captures the essence of self-
reflective activity.

Norm was sitting at one of the small tables. He had taken out the Fisher-
Price toy phone, picking up one receiver and was talking into the phone
and at the same time, moving the dials of the Fisher-Price clock. He kept
repeating Hello clock, hello clock, are you moving?

The children are busy exploring and manipulating objects and taking
themselves and their relationship with objects into account. Private meanings
prevail and the extent to which the childs self-other interaction with an object
is meaningful for the child is indicated by the childs total absorption with his
own activity.
Children absorb themselves in this stance with varying degrees of gusto
and for varying lengths of time. They may be physically removed from a
group of children or sitting side by side with others. They may be engaged
in any degree of physical activity from sitting rather still, to walking around
with a toy, to racing up and down the gym or yard with their bikes. They
166
may be shouting, laughing, crying, or silent as they engage themselves. They
may alter physical locale and cross several time-activity changes in the day
care centre and still be self-involved. Changing space and time, use of
physical or verbal motion, being separated or beside othersnone of these
superficial identifying characteristics are central to self-involvement. The
essential element of this stance is the private self-other-object involvement
within which the child becomes so engrossed that he is oblivious to other
activity around him.
7
Self-involvement can be subdivided into two categories including the
private self-object exchange with self-chosen activities, or, the childrens
involvement in teacher directed activities. In each of these categories the
children are still making their own objects, all of which have essentially a
private meaning for the child. Yet the structure within which they
manipulate objects and the actual physical material they use may have been
provided by a teacher. Each way is equally as engrossing and shares the
same elements as the other category. In fact, the lack of difference between
these two ways indicates that the sociostructural organization of a day care
setting is quite unlikely to prohibit this stance of involvement.
While I conceptually see no qualitative difference between these two
forms of self-involvement, the teachers often do. A child who is self-
absorbed with objects of his own choosing is often seen as egocentric.
However, a child self-absorbed, involved with objects of a teachers
choosing is often labelled an active, cooperative child. Consider the two
following examples.

This whole time (meeting time) Roy is sitting on the floor outside the door
of the toddlers meeting room playing with a spinning top, twirling it over
and over again. He is not interested in listening to the others.

Now, compare this example with a second one from my data in which a child is
self-involved using teacher designated objects.

I sat down at the paint table; Adam, Tricia and Josh were painting.
They were all concentrating on their painting judging by the lack of
noise or conversation and their disinterest in my arrival and each
other. Their motions were very slow and deliberate and they all
seemed to be painting very slowly and with great caution. Their faces
were all serious and involved in their work. They were not talking so
I didnt talk either.

From an adult viewpoint, the latter group is seen as being more productive and
constructive. They are doing something with their time. In the first example, the
child is seen as being engaged in a relatively meaningless action.
There is a tendency in the literature (Smilansky, 1968) on childrens
play (Parten, 1932; Weininger, 1979) to differentiate between what is
usually called solitary play (my first example) from what is called parallel
play (my last example) on the basis of the extent to which the engaged
child is in the actual presence of other children, and the extent to which
the child is absorbed in some sort of meaningful play from an adult point
167
of view. These categories fail to appreciate that from the childs point of
view, active involvement with others is not being sought. Whether beside
others or alone, the self-involved child is engaged in reflective activity. To
assign a valuational assessment on this type of behaviour overlooks the
amount of absorption, creativity and problem solving which engages the
self-involved child.
Regardless of chronological age, becoming engrossed with ourselves in an
activity seems characteristic of how we, as social role takers, develop. Acts
become engaging for the children, repeated and also approached in different
ways. Denzin (1977:130131) has described this type of activity as playing at a
self in which there occur dramatic encounters with the self that reside in the
covert features of the act. The person converses with his alter ego while he is
casting himself in a variety of different stances. The phrase playing at a self
conveys the message that there are many different selves children try on as they
take account of themselves, others and their experiences through self-reflective
activity.
A characteristic feature of self-involvement, especially as it increases in
absorption, is the amount of repetition involved. In fact, the amount of
repetition in this stance is so pervasive that it becomes one of the most trying
features of observation. Repetition provides a framework for continued
interaction (Garvey, 1977). When the involvement is no longer absorbing, the
children move on and create new situations for themselves.
As the children become involved with themselves during the act, their verbal
manipulation of their involvement objects becomes indicative of their
absorption. The children adapt their speech to the objects which they are
addressing. Denzin (1972:292) has made the same point stating that it is
consistent with an interactionist tradition to view language as a situated
production which varies according to the definitions which people give objects,
selves, others, time, place and the social relationship between speakers.
Psychologists (Fein and Clarke-Stewart, 1973) have noted that children learn to
use linguistic forms that are appropriate to particular occasions and settings.
The children learn how to formulate diverse and subtle repertoires of
information and intentions. They develop a theory of speaking and listening
that deals with the appropriateness of language to their place and setting.
Hence, I have examples of the children gooing like babies, hissing like bionic
men and reading out loud like teachers.
The children also display long attention spans indicative of their
engrossment in the act. In the following example, Abby spent longer than the
twelve minutes I actually measured her acting, since she initially got my
attention by being quietly absorbed for so long.

Abby spent twelve minutes trying to place eight small wooden people
upright on a school bus. She would knock them down with her arm as she
set them up and start all over again. She would finish, run the bus, the
people would fall over and she would start all over again.

In the process of their self-reflective involvement, the children quite literally and
mentally make objects. In some ways, the process of taking account of other
children becomes the object. The children are involved in a more general sense,
168
in the process of learning to take account of others and themselves within this
particular setting. Making objects and manipulating these objects becomes a
vehicle for sustaining this involvement. By recognizing the seriousness of this
engagement for the children, the observer is better able to understand this
stance of reflection as merely one among other qualitative types in which the
child is engaged.
Stance Two: Interpretive Observation and Display
In contrast to a stance of self-involvement, interpretive observation and
display is best conceptualized as childrens attempts to learn the ropes.
Through various techniques, the children make it evident that they are
trying to monitor and follow the ways of others. However, I have called this
interpretive observation or involvement from afar since it represents only a
peripheral commitment from the observing child. The observer is, in fact, a
bystander, a marginal man who hovers on the sideline of involvement eager
to take in as much information as he can about childrens behaviour and
yet not willing to participate with another child.
8
Marginal involvement often takes place beside other children. How else
to learn their ways if you do not follow closely? Interpretive involvement is
not a developmental stage in the production of self nor does it characterize
only newcomer behaviour. Children move in and out of this involvement
stance constantly and use it most fruitfully as a well defined period of quiet
observation and reflection. As Mead pointed out in stage one of the act,
reflective thinking is only necessary when the act is inhibited or halted. The
identifying of objects is a continual problem for children since in the flow of
action, new objects constantly arise leading to the reconstruction of past
events. Since acts require this continual redefinition and reflection on the
emergence of new objects, periods of time required to assess these
emergents is continually sought and used by individuals.
9
Marginal
involvement is not representative of an underdeveloped self but is an
involvement stance central to the continual reassessment which permits the
innovation and novelty of human life (Strauss, 1959:26).
Most characteristic of this stance is that of staring.
10
Examples abound of
children standing around staring at one child or groups of other children
involved in activities. Newcomers are most often seen spending what initially
appears as excessively long amounts of time sitting, standing or following the
actions of others.

Jesse wandered in and out of the two (play) rooms watching everyone.
Then, he stood in the doorway connecting the two rooms. He spent
approximately the next fifteen to twenty minutes doing this. He
generally scanne d the rooms and then focused on certain children for
periods of time, often focusing on wherever the greatest noise was
coming from.

By strategically placing himself in the doorway, this child was able to scan and
169
observe all the activities that were going on in the two rooms. Clearly, staring is
an initial and necessary way of learning what other children are all about.
While staring is the most extreme form of interpretive observation, there are
other characteristic stances by which the children begin to make initial
indications of their presence to others. Of these, public announcements are
common.

Kevin is running back and forth across the gym floor with a hockey stick
saying Watch me score.
Jeremy comes running by, picks up a board and yells Superman!

In all of these examples, an indication is being made to others that their action
is a public display. Their action is to be acknowledged by others by staring,
commenting on or joining in with. More often than not, the observing children
merely watch and resume their own acts. The essential differentiating quality of
this stance is its public nature in the form of an announcement or overture.
Others are requested to take account.
Similar to these public announcements are direct invitations to join in an
action. While, in the first case, the overture is decidedly open-ended, in the
latter a specific demand is placed on another child. Typically the physical
presence of the child is too close to be ignored.

Norm comes into the lunch room singing tea to himself repeatedly. He
goes over to the box of felt sticks in the corner, takes one out and brings it
over to me saying lemon, lemon and thrusts it in my face.

Or the invitation to join is phrased in the character of a question or an overt
demand which is, again, difficult to ignore.

Kevin approaches me on his bike in the gym and says Chase me.
Lila looks over and calls out, Warren, do you want to be my baby?

Repeatedly then, the children make obvious their willingness to be joined in
action by others. Yet, by virtue of their delivery, these statements and actions
are attempts to get others to merely take account of them, recognize their
presence and actions. Whether or not the other joins in is superfluous, otherwise
more tried and successful joining in tactics would be used. Yet an attempt has
been made to become part of the taking account process.
The inner (private) and the outer (public) sides of interaction are not as
clearly differentiated in observed action as the concepts suggest. Inner
thought expressed outwardly through observable action or language is what
Vygotsky (1962) and Markey (1928) and Flavell (1968) call sociocentric
declarations of intent. The child is treating other children, or any other
child who happens to be present, as an audience for their actions. They are
not taking the perspective of the other child, but literally acting at them
(Denzin, 1980:256). The children display this in the form of public
170
monologues, public announcements, and making initial overtures to others.
These childrens acts are transitional between the hidden covert self-
reflection of stance one and the more public other-reflective engagement of
stance three. By looking outside his own behaviour and casting others in the
stance of audience, the child creates a non-participating, socially distant
forum for his acts. While audience members always have the option of
commenting directly (Goffman, 1959), the child has the option of not
attending to this corrective feedback. Children understand the interactional
rule of their mutual obligation to attend to others views in reciprocal
involvements. Children are also notorious rule breakers in that these rules
are constantly negotiated. However, the transitional interactional stance of
interpretive observation and display allows the child to attend to others to
an extent that he alone controls.
In the next type of interaction, which I call making initial overtures, the
children typically physically join a group without greetings, announcements or
any overt displays and, simply, get on with the action.

Susan arrives in the room that morning, goes over to the mats where some
girls are laughing, sits down beside them and starts moving the blocks
around, as the others are.

Throughout this kind of episode, the joining child typically remains
interactionally aloof, content to be physically present, watching and listening,
and yet not directly involved with the others in the creation of an ongoing,
meaningful act. There is enough shared understanding in their acceptance into
the group and also their knowledge of how to remain anonymous in that
situation. By neither disrupting the act nor contributing to its flow, the interested
bystander stance is maintained.
A qualitatively distinct yet theoretically similar type of action is found in
the form I call crowding. Defined as invasion of interactional space, it
remains analytically distinct from common instances of invasion of
property such as grabbing valued possessions. While usually not deliberate,
crowding is a frequent form of involvement from afar. There are frequent
instances of crowding in which children attempt to join other children who
are self-absorbed, an involvement stance in which others are rarely
welcome.
Joffe (1973:107) has observed in her analysis of a pre-school setting how the
children engage in territoriality, a tendency to stake out geographical spaces,
objects and people as ones own. Territoriality arises over struggles for limited
supplies and demands for privacy.

Angie sat down in the car seat she found lying in the yard. Margo walks
over and tries to also sit down beside her. Angie yells Get off. Mine.
Angie shoves her on the ground. Margo starts howling.

In this example and others, the childs privacy is being invaded and attempts by
others to break into their space are strongly resisted.
In addition to literally crowding a childs interactional turf, often attempts
are made to take the trappings of the action. For example,
171
Brad arrives at the table and grabs Cindys playdough. Cindy screams,
Thats my birthday.

It is not the object per se which is desirable to the child but rather the action
enveloping the object which makes the object become a desirable thing. The
crowder correctly takes account of the other childs involvement and wants to
join in. What he has yet to learn is that self-involved children rarely want others
to join them.
All of these interpretive observations and displays entail a peripheral or
marginal involvement with others. Meanings are usually not understood or at
best, are shared only minimally with others. In brief, these various stances
represent the most initial phases of the taking account process.
Stance Three: Co-Involvement
The third stance, called co-involvement, is characterized by the attempts of
the children to track the public actions of other children and to fit or join
their actions with the others. In these involvements, the children have
moved into the realm of public interaction. In presenting varied lines of
action, the children are attempting to create a situated or focused
interaction based on a mutual understanding of social objects. For sustained
interaction, there must be sufficient understanding among the children on
the common involvement objects in order to continue joint acts. In fact, we
rarely do comprehend all aspects of interaction. There simply has to be
enough meaning, perhaps roughly understood, for an act to continue. When
the children are engaged with others in an attempt to join their lines of
action, they are often unsuccessful. A great deal of guess work goes on as
the child tentatively puts forth an idea, an action, a physical object, a non-
verbal glance or gesture. If these cues are picked up by another child and
interpreted accurately, then an initial joint encounter is created. For this
exchange to continue, the simultaneous sharing and sending of cues must
proceed. However, the characteristic element of this involvement stance is
the inability of interaction to proceed in this turn-taking manner.
Problematic activity
11
forces the children to search for alternative lines on
which joint acts can be built. Building joint acts is attempted but not
accomplished. Enough meaning is not shared. Reciprocal social role taking thus
fails. This stance is differentiated from the fourth stance of public action by the
childs inability to accurately take into account the feelings, attitudes, and
interpretation of the other, and articulate, negotiate and build on these.
There are many tactics which the children use to find these common
grounds. When problems halt the flow, if the children are committed to
working out tentative agreements to overcome the momentary impasse, they
will prod one another, propose alternatives, and doggedly pursue new
activities.
12
In short, by continually digging at one anothers meaning, the
children are engaged in a trial and error process of reaching common
understanding.
The degree to which a child is committed (Becker, 1970b) to join an act
appears to determine the extent to which the prodding goes on. The key to
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this concept appears to be that the child sees his searching for alternative
lines of mutually agreeable action as consistent with his overall commitment
to the involvement object and others. Children spend extended periods of
time attempting to adjust their lines of action to the other, sometimes to no
avail. The search takes on a protracted negotiated character as the action
shifts from one object to another. Co-involved interactive sequences thus
strike the observer as disjointed, bumpy, random and rather chaotic
occasions. They no doubt strike the children the same way. The children
encounter frustration and the fatigue of continual attempts to get another
person to understand what they are trying to articulate or perform. For
example,

Lorna says to Jackie, You be the baby. Jackie replies, You be the baby,
okay Lorna? Lorna then says, No lets cook.Jackie shakes her head and
walks off to the water table. Lorna lies down on the floor beside the piano
saying, Then Ill be the baby if Jackie wont play.

In this case, the children never did agree on their involvement objects and the
continual switching of themes suggests the dissatisfaction felt.
While these above examples have indicated the verbal element of digging,
the search for common ground also goes on non-verbally. In the following
example, gestures prevail. After a period of fighting over a train,

Michael takes Norms hand and they walk over to the shelf and Michael
takes down a train for Norm. Michael then takes his train and runs it
along the floor making train noises. Norm starts to tentatively move his
train along. When I looked back a minute later, Norm was following
Michael around the room as Michael moved his train around. Michael
looked up and said, Are you walking with me? Norm nods his head.
Michael replies, You walk with me and the trains, okay Norm? Norm
smiles and gets down on the floor and starts to push the back of the train
with Michael.

Given an openness to joining and being joined, if the children persist, try new
lines of action and jointly dig for common ground, they can usually work out a
satisfactory agreement. Accomplishing working agreements is a trial and error
process in which two or more children continually search for common lines of
agreement. The manipulative stage in which something is actually done to the
common objects of involvement is rarely smooth. Interpretive problems
continually threaten to halt the action unless new areas of understanding are
reached.
Stance Four: Reciprocal Involvement
The final involvement stance is characterized by a smooth, running process in
which action is jointly created on shared definitions of the situation.
13
The
children stand firmly on the same grounds. While overt digging takes place, it is
not the central element in this process. More characteristic is the active,
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understood, ongoing flow of involvement. It represents a rather finished
product of the whole taking account process in which the joint action is not
circumvented by the problem of perception, definition or evaluation. The
children are adept at reading the cues put forth by their partners and adjusting
their responses. They are, as Becker (1970c) has coined the phrase, capable of
situational adjustment.
14
The children can be mutually involved with one another through a complex
series of gestures. In fact, studies of infants in cribs done by, among others,
Spiro (1965) and Provence et al. (1977) attest to this quality of non-verbal
shared understanding.
As verbal competency increases, the children combine their gestural skills
with their verbal skills in advancing reciprocal involvement. In this example,
talking becomes a focus for their involvement.

Amanda gets out a book and starts to ad-lib the story, holding the book
open to the rest of the children as the teachers do and turning the pages as
she tells the story. (There is no story line.) Jason, John and Clare sit
absolutely quiet as she reads. When Amanda gets silly by turning to a page
and saying, wee, wee, wee, gee, gee, gee, the children laugh for four
pages of this and then start fidgeting and looking away. Amanda picks up
on this cue and starts to read again.

Perhaps of all the incidents of shared involvement, to both the observer and,
judging by their engrossment and repetition, also to the children, the most
fascinating are those in which the flow of shared understanding runs on and
on, shifting themes and physical locations.
15
I have numerous examples of,
among others, children watching Sesame Street on broken televisions, rushing
friends in and out of hospitals, dashing about putting out fires, gassing and
repairing broken trucks and cars, attacking as, and defending themselves from
monsters, cooking, eating, drinking sand food and painting porches.
Throughout all of these positions of shared involvement, the central thrust is
one of moving the action along, sorting out minor problems and getting on
with the business of being finely attuned to the others. Sometimes what the
children are doing, like riding buses or making muffins, provides an opportunity
for focused interaction and the bus riding is an ancillary activity (Denzin,
1977:152).
While the most interesting and complex of these examples would take a page
to quote, short excerpts will perhaps provide the flavour of this process. The
action can include the familiar themes of playing house.

Lorna is in the doll bed lying down as the baby. Jackie is the mother. Lorna
cries like a baby saying, wa, wa, wa,Jackie laughs and sticks a small toy
in her mouth and says, Stop crying baby. Heres your bottle. Lorna
smiles and drinks; Jackie laughs again. Lorna says, Pat me. Jackie leans
over and pats her. Lorna says, Im hungry. Jackie walks over to the doll
centre, pretends to take something out of an empty doll cup, returns and
says, here baby, heres your food.

In all of the cases, I was struck by the relative speed and ease of the
174
exchange. The children are tuned into each other in the sense that they seem
to understand and be able to follow and anticipate changes in the others
line of action. Denzin (1977:167168) has commented on the concept of
interactional age. As situational awareness increases and incorporates an
expanding range of interactional others, the social exchanges of children
become more complex. Obviously, what has come before for a child will
have some force in the present, as the presents slip continually one into
another (Mead, 1959:9). Yet, without a very detailed and lengthy focused
observation, it is quite impossible to do more than hypothesize that
newcomers to the taking the role of the other toward self process would not
initially be participating in these sometimes lengthy and complex
exchanges.
Conclusion
As this involvement continuum suggests, negotiating social meanings is a
complex process ranging from private self-reflective activity to publicly shared
agreements. The first two stances include the private, covert side of interaction.
Self-reflective activity or self-involvement is conceptually similar to what James
(1890) called the phenomenological stream of interaction or stream of
consciousness. This is the hidden stance in which the child is thinking, planning
and wrestling with objects.
Acts characteristic of the second stance, interpretive observation of and
display to others, are again essentially private in that distinct others are not
invited to join in an activity. However, the involvement is peripheral or
marginal to that of others, since it is these others lines of action which
constitute the focus for the observing child. Being essentially private
interpretations of others activities, the extent to which self-object
understanding is shared is indicated by both the childs absorption in the
activities associated with this stance and by his ability to involve himself in
observation of others without shattering the flow. The child as field worker is
tracking the ways of others. By visually and auditorily monitoring others, he is
attempting to grasp the complex cues and construction of fluid rules of
interaction for entry into, procedure within and exit from a focused interaction.
The child imaginatively and mentally is rehearsing how he would fit into others
lines of activity. If his assessment of their ways is accurate, the child can
maintain his marginal stance neither publicly contributing to, nor disrupting
the actions of others.
The third and fourth stances involve public attempts to fit lines of action
together. The third involvement stance, labeled co-involvement, is
characterized by its essential failure to accomplish this mutual joining activity.
Children in this stance are constantly negotiating with and prodding at one
anothers public actions to reach an understanding about shared social
activities. However, despite their wrestling with these stubborn and
troublesome objects and despite the often tremendous guesswork which takes
place, the children are unable to sustain mutual interaction based on sufficient
understanding. Meadian problems halt the flow of activity.
Mistakes at work (Hughes, 1958) or failure of interaction (Goffman,
175
1959) provide us with a taste of the essential negotiative elements of the
childrens work. Strauss (1959:61) has noted that it is unusual for anyone
to note all aspects of interaction. In many situations, a great many aspects
of interaction are taken for granted. By tentatively putting forth public lines
of action, the children are engaged in a continual trial and error process
which provides them with corrective feedback. Given their limited
interactional experience, many situations are not yet conventionalized. Each
child enters a focused interaction with a fund of prior knowledge
concerning the social production of situational definitions. This prior
experience includes repetition with some familiar others and fewer, regular
encounters with unfamiliar others. Hence this co-involvement stance of
reaching working agreements with other children is characterized by the
constant digging for mutual understanding by switching lines of action until
a common object can be grasped. Negotiation (Strauss, 1978), as Meadian
problem solving, is central to everyday life for the children in day care
centres. The children can commit themselves to handing misunderstandings
as they arise by situationally adjusting their public behaviour and thus
resolving disputes. However, whether for lack of commitment (Becker,
1970c) or lack of conventionalized methods of handling these problems, the
joint attempts fail. Over time, observations of stable groups (Fine, 1979;
Becker et al., 1961; Denzin, 1977) reveal that individual, corporate histories
and traditional patterns of reaching working agreements (co-involvement)
will become part of the groups perspective. What has gone before and
perhaps become codified in rules, albeit situationally negotiable, will
obviously affect what which is ongoing. But, as Meads concept of novelty
suggests, each emergent in new situations is itself unique and neither
structurally nor historically determined. Simply spending time in creating
mutual interactions with unfamiliar others no doubt provides the child with
a wider range of experience with which to participate in the production of
emergents. The children evolve a variety of negotiative tactics which they
use to prod the other child into accepting their proposed definitions.
Through this interplay of suggested lines of action, the children negotiate a
situated product.
The fourth involvement stance,
16
called reciprocal (reciprocated)
involvement, is based on successful mutual alignment of joint activity. This
stance is characterized by a smooth, running process of children creating
publicly shared meanings of social objects. They share similar definitions of
their mutual activity and hence stand firmly on the same grounds. While
problems arise which threaten to disrupt their actions, these are easily
manipulated. What differentiates this involvement from the previous stance is
not so much their success at mutually sustaining the interaction but rather their
active creation of shared meanings sufficiently agreed on to allow joint acts to
continue. The result is reciprocated and often instantaneous understanding of
others public displays. This is the stance characteristic of what Strauss
(1959:55) calls a rhythmic ballet, and what Schaffer (1977:61) calls a
harmonious dialogue. In both cases, the participants are attuned to one another,
share the same code of signals and send and receive these signals via several
channels simultaneously (Schaffer, 1977:61).
Sociological research into the world of children (Denzin, 1973; Corsaro,
176
1981; Glassner, 1976; Fine, 1979; Joffe, 1973) has begun to catalogue the range
and complexity of situational behaviour within naturalistic settings. Movement
in this research direction has the effect of slowing the search for causal
connections of appropriate child behaviour. This is accomplished by
emphasizing the gradualistic and relational emergence of role-taking and
negotiative behaviours.
Documentation of childrens interaction with other children and with
themselves demonstrates that role-taking is not a unitary concept. It holds a
variety of meanings depending on the relation of self-other to social objects. For
this reason, the term involvement in negotiating meaning captures the variety of
instances in which children engage.
The notion of various stances of interactional awareness contributes to the
growing literature on interpretations, understandings and hermeneutics
(Scheler, [1913] 1954; Schutz, 1962; Denzin, 1980). How we understand and
interpret the other is essential to Meads philosophy of the act. In this light,
children can be viewed as hermeneutic interpretors of one anothers actions in
schooling settings. As such, this study suggests that the interpretive process in
which the children are engaged is more complex than simply imaginatively
projecting oneself into anothers line of action or thought. Imaginative
projection glosses over the actual process by which the children translate and
piece together the meanings of anothers actions and place these actions within
a meaningful totality. These units of action might include what adults call play,
routines, rituals or encounters. But basic to each unit is the childs process of
interpretation and comprehension of the acts and objects of others. Our task in
childhood socialization studies is to analyze these social fields of experience as
they are repeatedly generated in collective settings of young children.
Clearly there are a number of more specific questions left unanswered. Much
more detail into the interactional careers of specific groups of children is needed
to indicate the place of interactional age and histories of role-taking with
unfamiliar others. We require more detail on degrees of reflexivity as these
relate to the childrens interactional position with others. Does the child adopt
the standpoint of the other (Turner, 1961) as his own or as a depersonalized
norm? Finally, we need to investigate the place of emotions (Denzin, 1980) in
the childs adoption of varying interactional stances with other children.
Notes
1 Other studies of childrens play, notably psychological accounts, rely almost
exclusively on the childs physical actions as defined by an adult observer, and make
no attempt to discern the childs definition of the act, object or situation.
2 The childrens objects I deal with belong essentially to stage two of Meads act. Some
of these objects are mentally manipulated and some are concrete and resistant, such
as sand which is defined by the children in non-adult ways and used by the children
as food. But generally, stage two objects resist in the sense that they may not permit
continuing the act especially if others are involved. See Mead (1938:59, 74) for a
discussion of the resistance of objects, and Mead (1938:3233) for a discussion of
differing objects in each stage of the act.
3 Goffman (1963:36) defined involvement close to its dictionary meaning. To
177
involve means to occupy oneself absorbingly, to engross oneself fully. To be
engaged in an occasional activity means to sustain some kind of cognitive and
affective engrossment in it, some mobilization of ones psychological resources; in
short, it means to be involved in the activity.
4 Interactional age is a dynamic and relatively unexplored concept in studies of
children. In order to fully examine this concept, one would need to follow the
careers of children.
5 See Denzin (1980), Hochschild (1975), Scheler ([1913] 1954), and Schutz (1962)
for discussion of the emotional content of interactional analysis.
6 The particular problems I encountered in this role with the teachers are dealt with in
another article (Mandell, 1983) [and this book, Chapter 4].
7 Self-involvement is conceptually distinct from Goffmans (1963:69) being away.
This will be discussed in Stance Two, Interpretive Observation and Display.
8 See Geer et al. (1968:209213) for a discussion of learning the ropes.
9 See Mead (1959:912) for his discussion of reflection and emergence.
10 In the psychological literature (Weininger, 1979:34) what I encompass under one
technique of interpretive observation, namely staring, psychologists have labelled
onlooker play.
11 For Mead, a problem was always an event or an idea in philosophy or science which
did not make sense. My idea of Meadian problem solving relates more narrowly to
Meads stages of the act in which misunderstandings halt the flow of the act. My use
of problem solving does not appear as such in The Philosophy of the Act. See
Meads (1938:79) discussion of problems.
12 While negotiation goes on throughout many of these involvement stances, it is not
defined here as a distinct perspective. It seems that the initial use of the concept
negotiation (Strauss, 1963) as a separate category in various socialization studies
was in part a way to remind the reader of the interactional nature of the study. Here,
I moved beyond that point and suggest that the interactional socialization
perspective always assumes a negotiative character.
13 As Polanyi and Prosch (1975:44) state, our capacity for making sense of, for
understanding another persons action emerges by entering into his situation and by
judging his actions from within his own point of view.
14 Becker (1970c:279) defines situational adjustment as the individuals capacity, as he
moves in and out of a variety of social situations, to learn the requirements of
continuing in each situation and achieving success in it.
15 Much has been written about the role of fantasy in childrens play usually with a
view to exploiting its functional significance. See Markey (1928), Ellis (1973), and
Herron and Sutton-Smith (1971).
16 According to Mead (1938:77), the relationship between act and object and these
two considered as one can be called a situation. Each involvement stance thus
represents varying situations.
Concluding Note
In Chapter 5 I made the claim that taking children seriously as subjects of
sociological analysis would have as one consequence the development of ideas
that would contribute to an understanding of adults as well as children. This
article by Mandell provides evidence for just such a claim. Rather than viewing
the four involvement stances Mandell identifies as applicable only to children,
we might, by applying them to adult behavior, gain insights into the social
worlds of adults.
178
Take, for example, a party:

1 self-involvement could describe the solitary drinkers, solitary dancers,
and those engrossed in the hors doeuvres.
2 interpretive observation and display might characterize those leaning
against chairs and door jambs, watching the party.
3 co-involvement could be found in preliminary conversations and
small talk.
4 reciprocal involvement might be seen in total engrossment in
conversation, in dancing with others, etc.

A research study of adult parties using such a model might well support the
existence of such stances among adults; such a study might also identify other
kinds of stances. Again, if we were to forego the temptation to attribute any
such newly-discovered stances to adults only but instead return to a study of
young children, we might well find those newly discovered stances present there
as well. Working between adult worlds and childrens worlds rather than
studying each in isolation holds promise for bringing to light features of each
world that might otherwise be missed.
F.C.W.
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Chapter 13

Children Doing Artwork
Erica Cavin
Commentary
Cavin conducted the study described in her paper after reading an earlier draft
of this book. Her work demonstrates clearly the useful guidance that can be
provided by works of the kind presented in this volume. Like Mandell, for
example, she examines childrens ways and, like Mackay, she focuses on
childrens competencies.
By directing her sociological attention to aspects of childrens behavior that are
more commonly considered in psychological terms, she is able to display the social
dimensions of such behavior. Of particular theoretical importance is Cavins
questioning of the procedures for identifying solitary behavior. What in everyday
life is taken for granted as solitary activity may, on the basis of careful sociological
observation, be found to be social, in the sense that it is oriented to others and takes
them into account. Cavin makes clear that, whether or not it is indeed possible to
engage in solitary behavior when in the presence of others, a gathering of young
children, each working on an individual project, can be a social event.
Also worth highlighting is Cavins recognition of the very different standards
and attitudes applied to the artwork of children and of adults. Her data
suggests that adults view childrens artwork as in some sense trivial, perhaps
meaningful for what it discloses of a childs personality or motor skills but not
worthy of aesthetic consideration. In contrast, Cavins observations of
childrens talk about their work (how it is best executed, whether or not it is
pretty) and recognition of its audience (someone in particular that it is for,
display of the finished product) suggest that children may take their artwork
indeed to be art.
F.C.W.
Background
The purpose of this study
1
is to examine sociologically the classroom activity
known as doing artwork. Through the use of sociological methodology, I
explored aspects of this activity that, as a teacher, I had found intriguing. My
180
focus shifted several times through the course of my investigation, reflecting my
changing understanding of what I was observing. Thus what began as a study
of drawing as a solitary activity became an investigation of children doing
artwork within the context of a classroom and encompasses such topics as
what constitutes drawing and what it means to finish a picture.
The data were gathered in observations which took place in 1984 and 1990.
In 1984 I spent a day observing children drawing in a nursery school setting as
part of a broad interest in childrens activities. From 1984 to 1989, working
both as a student teacher and teacher in day care and school settings, I had the
opportunity to informally observe children drawing. In 1990 I returned to a day
care classroom to carry out more systematic observations.
My first observations drew upon ideas from my previous work as an aide in
a number of classrooms. I had certain expectations about what sorts of things I
might find. I remembered scenes of individual children drawing in shared space.
Though within feet of each other, they would be so intent on the process of
drawing that they were seemingly oblivious to the presence of others. I also
could envision another type of child who drew while staring straight ahead
looking at anything but the paper being used. Finally I could imagine the child
who concentrated not only on drawing but on doing it right. This childs
picture would often end up torn in frustration and thrown away, despite a
teachers protests that it was a very good picture.
These were the kinds of activities I expected to observe at that time. I
anticipated seeing children taking different attitudes towards what they were
doing but having certain characteristics in common. They would be engaged in
drawing as an individual and nonverbal activity. However, from the very
begining my observations contradicted these expectations. My 1990
observations reinforced my 1984 discovery that looking as a sociologist rather
than as a teacher at children drawing revealed very different aspects of this
activityaspects that have value for both sociologists and teachers.
2
In my analysis of each set of observations I tried to follow the data wherever
they led. Thus in the first setting I focused on drawing and speech and on drawing
as a group activity. I continued this focus in my later day care observations, but I
noticed that there was less group drawing and the children tended to use drawing
materials in combination with other materials, e.g. markers, paper, and scissors,
or stamp pads, stamps, crayons and paper. It seemed overly restrictive to limit my
observations to those children who only used drawing materials and paper. Insofar
as the use of a variety of materials in a variety of ways was part of doing drawings
for these children, I widened the scope of my observations to include these activities
and my focus shifted to the details of drawing as a practical accomplishment. Thus
the topic of this paper, which began as children drawing, now could be more
accurately described as children carrying out procedures with materials from the
working category known as art materials . For the sake of simplicity, I have
reduced this phrase to children doing artwork .
The Settings
My 1984 observations were carried out at a nursery school in Brookline,
Massachusetts. This school is open five mornings a week with an optional
181
extended day program for part of the afternoon. The school accepts children
who are between 2 1/2 and 5 years in age. I spent one morning at this school,
visiting two of its five classrooms: the 3-year-olds room and the 2 1/2-year-
olds room. The younger children I observed who were drawing that day were
involved in what was referred to as a project: They were coloring on large
pieces of paper to which string had been attached to form capes. The children
were to wear the capes in a parade. This activity was teacher-directed in that the
teacher defined the product. The children received no direction in the actual
process of drawing while I was in the room. The children were seated at a
rectangular table on which both crayons and magic markers had been placed.
When I began my observations in that room, the activity was already in
progress. The older children were able to choose to draw as one of a number of
activities available to them. In that room, teachers had set up activities on the
various tables. I sat near a round table on which a teacher had arranged pieces
of paper and boxes of crayons.
The time that elapsed between the sets of observations enabled me to
reassess the earlier experience and include new criteria in my selection of a next
site. In my first observations, I had decided to observe younger children (2 and
3 years old) due to the types of drawings I had seen made by children of this age
in the past. My reasoning was that such drawings would be harder for me, as an
adult, to interpret and I would be forced to rely on the childrens own
interpretations. In this I was trying to follow Garfinkels recommendation to
select a subject of investigation that was anthropologically strange (1967:9).
My interest was in uncovering the childrens knowledge of drawing, not in
studying my own preconceptions.
By the time of my later observations, access to a classroom in which children
were able to choose materials freely became an important consideration.
Interest in childrens knowledge and competence led me to choose a setting in
which children potentially would have more freedom of choice and where,
accordingly, I would be able to observe the childrens rather than the teachers
choices and decisions.
Thus my 1990 observations took place in a classroom at a day care
center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Children between the ages of 15
months and 5 years attend this center, which is open from 8:15 in the
morning to 5:30 in the afternoon. I chose to observe the 4 and 5 year old
children at this center. I observed in this classroom five times in the
morning and once in the afternoon over the course of three weeks. In the
mornings, I arrived before the children, while the teachers were setting up
morning activities. I stayed through the free play period and helped the
group clean up. I generally left after clean up time but occasionally stayed
for portions of the other morning activities including snack, group meeting
and outdoor play to get more of a sense of the day as a whole. On the
afternoon that I observed I arrived while the children were playing outside
and stayed through afternoon group meeting and afternoon free play and
activity times until the end of the day.
Although this classroom was similar to the nursery school rooms in that
children came in to the classroom to find activities that had been set up by
teachers, it differed in the manner in which children could use these activities as
well as the materials stored on shelves. In the day care classroom, child-selected
182
art supplies could often be incorporated with or substituted for teacher-selected
activities.
3
Methodology
I engaged in overt observation in both settings. I sat near the tables at which art
activities were taking place in each room and took notes openly. In my later
observations, in the day care classroom, my notetaking appeared to be of great
interest to some of the children. We seemed to be participants in a process of
mutual observation. Even as I was trying to make sense of what the children
were doing, so were some of the children trying to make sense of me.
4
My methodology changed somewhat through the course of both sets of
observations, in accord with my developing understanding of the phenomenon
being studied. In my initial observations at the nursery school, I decided to
supplement observational data by conducting informal interviews, asking
children questions about those elements of drawing which I could not make
sense of. However, I immediately discovered that this approach had a basic
flaw; the children would not answer direct questions. I was unsuccessful in my
attempts to interview any of the children. Generally they responded to my
questions with smiles or silence. The longest verbal response I received was
monosyllabic. As an alternative to formal interviewing I recorded the
comments the children made as they drew. This proved to be a valuable source
of data. The efficacy of this procedure was such that I followed it in both
settings.
Findings
In what follows I combine the data from both sets of observations and provide
analysis under the following headings:

The solitary nature of doing artwork
Doing artwork as a group activity
The nature of doing artwork
The particular problem of finishing

The first two topics build on concerns that emerged from my intial
observations; the latter topics focus on issues that arose in my later
observations.
The Solitary Nature of Doing Artwork
The utterances made by the nursery school children while drawing proved
wrong my most basic assumption regarding that activity, i.e. that drawing is a
solitary activity even when more than one child is doing it. Psychological
conceptions of young childrens play as solitary or parallel colored my
183
viewpoint.
5
Though I deliberately chose an observational setting where it
would be possible to see more than one child drawing at the same time. I did
not, prior to my first observations, expect to see much interaction between the
children as they drew. Interestingly, particularly in the nursery school, I saw
much interactive drawing, while solitary drawing was not much in evidence.
In the nursery school rooms, one or two of the children did not speak while
drawing. These children nonetheless demonstrated awareness of the other
children and the interactions taking place around them, for they occasionally
looked up from their pictures, gazing directly at some of the speaking children.
I noticed that the speaking children generally did not try to talk to the non-
speakers. It was as if they distinguished between one category of children who
speak and are spoken to and a second category of children who dont speak and
are not spoken to. Membership in these two categories seemed to be determined
by individuals behavior (based on whether or not they spoke) and was
generally recognized and respected by other members of the group. I will refer
to these individuals who did not choose to interact verbally with others as
solitary workers.
Having observed solitary workers at the nursery school I was interested to
see the following incident at the day care center in which a child approached
and attempted to speak to a nonspeaking child. Melissa was sitting alone
coloring with markers. She was silent as she worked. Abby approached the
table with a rolled up crepe streamer on her hand and held it out announcing,
Lollipops for sale. Melissa looked up at Abby but made no verbal response.
Abby then asked Melissa to repeat some nonsense syllables. Mellissa again
made no response. Abby left and Melissa returned to her picture. This episode
demonstrated how it is possible to maintain a solitary status, even when that
status is threatened.
It seems as though, while in a classroom setting, being solitary in the sense
of working alone while focused on a particular project is problematic.
Solitary workers appear to be potential interactants; they seem aware of their
surroundings and the people nearby. It is by their ongoing choices that they
determine the extent of their involvement with others even while carrying out
a particular task, such as drawing. To a certain extent it is possible to do
solitary artwork while sharing a table with a group. However I suspect that
the only way to do true solitary artwork is to work in a place that has no other
people in it.
Distractability, though certainly an issue in doing artwork, does not seem to
be a deciding factor in distinguishing solitary from group workers in art
actitivies. In one example, a group stopped drawing to watch some boys who
were playing noisily at a nearby table. The solitary worker (the child who had
not been participating in the group conversation) did not look up once though
the distraction continued for several minutes. On the other hand I watched
another solitary worker who not only seemed to be aware of what was going on
in the room but appeared to change his behavior based on what he saw. The
teacher made an announcement that it was time to clean up. This child looked
at her when she spoke, then looked down at his picture and began to color at a
much faster rate than he had done before. He did this for several minutes,
looked up again at the teacher, who did not appear to notice that the child was
not cleaning up, and colored again at the faster rate.
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In the day care classroom I witnessed many additional examples of solitary
work. Some of this solitary work took place while others were co-present, other
instances occured where individuals were alone at a table. Yet, as with the
solitary children observed at the nursery school setting, these children displayed
awareness of their surroundings. One child, Mark, had been coloring quietly
when a child in a nearby area began to cry. Mark asked the teacher comforting
that child, Why Abby sad? In another instance Joshua had been coloring alone
at a table when a loud buzzing sound was heard from across the room. He then
joined in a discussion of the probable cause of the noise with children from two
other areas in the room.
I do not want to suggest that children engaged in art activities operate like
jack-in-the-boxes, popping up at every random noise. Instead, they seem to be
selective about what they respond to. In one instance, Melissa looked up at the
sound of Cathleens and Abbys conversation but made no visible response to
the crying sounds made by Bobby and Joshua pretending to be babies, although
the boys were louder and closer to Melissa. Given the particular physical stance
required by drawing in particular, which tends to involve leaning forward
slightly and focusing down on a piece of paper, it is not surprising to find
examples of children noticing sounds.
Having noticed the presence of distractions during my earlier
observations, I decided to focus on this phenomenon in my later ones. I found
that children did not demonstrate awareness only of random noise; rather it
seemed as though there were logical pauses and natural distraction points in
the procedures of doing artwork. For example, a child using markers may
shift focus from the paper being used to the box of markers and anything
beyond that object when stopping work to switch colors. This time seemed to
be a natural one for the child to notice something occuring nearby in the
room. Although a child might look up at a sudden noise, a child might also
stop work while dipping a paintbrush into paints if something catches the
childs eye while doing so. By closely investigating specific instances of
becoming distracted, such occurrences are revealed to be a logical part of the
activity in question.
Doing Artwork as a Group Activity
As mentioned above, as an alternative to unsuccessful attempts to interview
the nursery school children I recorded childrens utterances and focused on
their speech as a source of data. It was as if talking were a part of doing
drawing for many of the children I observed. It was this finding that proved
wrong my initial expectation of drawing being a solitary experience. By
studying the childrens speech I was able to see drawing as a group activity for
the first time.
As I listened to the children I was struck by certain patterns of
statements that consisted of very similar comments made by different
children. These comments were unlike normal conversation in that they
seemingly were not directed towards one specific person nor did they
appear to require an answer. Nancy Mandell, in Childrens Negotiation of
Meaning [see Chapter 12 in this volume] describes such utterances as
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public announcements. The variation on public announcements that I
witnessed involved sequential statements that seemed to mirror the initial
utterance rather than being an answer to that utterance. In one example of
this that took place in the 3-year-olds room, a child, Carol, came to the
coloring table saying, I want to make a picture for my mommy. Another
girl came with Carol to the table saying, I want to make a picture, almost
the same statement that Carol had made earlier. The short time involved
gives it an echo-like quality. Almost before the second speaker hears the end
of the first speakers sentence, the second comment is made.
After these girls and two others had been coloring for a while this comment
was made, I made a design. Look, I made a caterpillar. Immediately Carol
came out with, Im making a picture of my mommy and daddy, and Sharon
said, Im making twinkle, twinkle little star. These statements came quickly,
one after the other. Again, it seemed to me upon hearing these utterances as if
the later speakers could hardly have had time to hear the end of the initial
speakers sentence. However the sentences themselves suggest that this is not
the case. The sentences which follow the initial utterance are similar in both
form and content to the initial sentence. A typical pattern might be:

Child 1: Im making x.
Child 2: Im making y.
Child 3: Im making z.
Once the focal characteristic is established, it does not change. Based on what
I saw, it would be unlikely for the third child, in the above example, to leave
the topic of making and discuss some other aspect of the original sentence.
(This child would not be likely to say, I like x instead of Im making z.) This
is not to say that such a statement could not be made, but I did not observe
such an occurrence and thus could not speculate about what such an
utterance might mean.
As the utterances are made so quickly it is difficult to see how the focus
emerges. It could be that given the activity of drawing, certain types of things
are likely to be a focus. It is possible that in a series of public announcements
there is someone who decides what the focus will be. Possibly the second
speaker determines the focus by his or her very statement. Further study may
clarify this point.
A group public announcement contrasted with the other type of
verbalization made by the children which might be termed a conversational
statement. From the examples outlined above a group public announcement
can be seen as an utterance directed towards no one in particular. A
conversational statement, by contrast, is a statement made with a specific
intended audience and with the expectation of a verbal or nonverbal
response. Although one cannot observe an intention directly it is possible to
distinguish between an announcement and a conversational statement from
the responses made to each type of verbalization. For example, Bobbys
intended recipient is clear in the following conversational statements: Look
at my thing. Lookit, Joshua. Joshua, lookit. Lookit my picture.
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In conversations in general there is likely to be eye contact; in
conversations between drawing children the eye contact is more likely to be
between a child and a piece of paper than between two children. It is the
aspect of there being an intended recipient rather than of there being
reciprocal statements which is both important and problematic for an
observer. When a childs gaze is directed towards the paper it cannot
provide any clue about the recipient.
In the both settings, the tools and activities of doing artwork were the main
topics of these observed conversations. In the day care room, however, the
children referred to other classroom activities and non-school related items as
well as subjects connected to the activities at hand. Subjects that were not
related to either the classroom or art activities included small talk, e.g. in
response to a teachers question of How was your weekend? Frequently,
though not always, topics that did not relate to classroom activities had been
raised by teachers. On the whole, however, conversations did not seem to be
secondary activities to drawing but a part of the activity itself, as can be seen
from the following examples.

Nisha: Im working on something real well. I have to do this very
quick.
Abby: Youre making it shiny.
Crystal: My cats almost done. Im going to make its babies inside its
tummy.
Nisha: Inside its tummy?!
Molly: Thats silly.
Crystal: But I can only make its [the babys] head. You know why?
Because Im going to to color its [the cats] tummy.

Children used both conversations and public announcements to accomplish a
number of tasks. Either could be used to seek or provide information. For
example, when Abby covered her hands with ink, Nisha announced, Shes
painting her hands. Melissa asked Abby directly, What are you doing?
Similarly, children used both means to provide information and define
situations.
At times the information provided in these utterances was not information
that anyone had been noticably seeking. One child made several pictures fairly
quickly and handed each one to me saying, Arent they pretty? An additional
example of this sort of statement was provided by Andrea. After watching
Sharon color lightly for several minutes she said. Thats not right and
demonstrated another way of coloring. At another time, Andrea told Carol not
to talk, saying that if she spoke they would scribble and they (Andrea and
Sharon) did not want to do that. In an example from the day care room, Nisha
announced, Im making pretty drawings. Im making it so pretty.
The following excerpt from a conversation shows how information provided
may be problematic. Two children were tracing and coloring using stencils of
St. Patricks day shamrocks and colored pencils that had been set out on a table
by a teacher.
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Don: Thats a wonderful old tree, Joshua.
Joshua: That isnt a tree.
Don: That! (pointing at the shamrock on Joshuas picture).
Joshua: That isnt a tree.
Don: What is it?
Joshua: A clover.
Don: The clover does not have a trunk.
Joshua: I know it doesnt have a trunk.
Don: Ive seen one.
Joshua: Well I have too. Ive picked one.
Don: Ive picked three four-leaf clover. Ive picked a three-leaf
clover.
Joshua: Well snancy [sic] stupid. Isnt that snupid [sic]. (Eventually
they agree that Joshuas picture is of a clover and Dons
picture is of a tree.)

What is most striking about all the types of utterances made while drawing is
how closely related they are to this activity and how significant the activity is to
the comments. Although some of the children did not speak, for those who did,
talking and drawing were so interrelated as to be virtually inseparable. Certain
utterances made by children who were sitting alone offer further evidence of the
connection between talking and drawing. The following example comes from
the day care classroom. While Don was coloring alone he said, looking down at
his paper, A giant spaceship. Theres a big spaceship. As he continued to color
he made what sounded like spaceship noises. Other children hummed and sang
while working. From these observations, it seems that making sounds and
talking can be a significant component of doing artwork.
The Nature of Doing Artwork
Evidence suggests that doing artwork can be seen as a series of completed tasks.
A child could pause or even stop at any point in this continuum from the initial
approach to the art table to putting away the resulting product. I observed what
I thought to be aborted approaches in which a child would come near to the
work space, look at what was available, perhaps pick up some of the materials
and/or look at stored materials on the shelves and then leave. Some children
returned later and used the materials, others did not. In a completed approach, a
child might examine what was available in a similar manner but would then
make use of some materials. During these approaches a child might state aloud an
intention to use the materials and/or describe how they will be used. For example,
Joshua approached a table set up with stencils, pencils and paper saying, Im
gonna make one of these. Another child used an utterance made during an
approach to negotiate with a companion. Cathleen came to the art table saying,
Abby, lets make it over here. Theres gold and silver [crayons].
When a child remained at a table, there were a number of options
available. From what I saw it was possible to use the materials which had
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been pre-selected by teachers earlier and possibly added to or changed by
children, or to select something else from the shelves or from another area of
the room. It was also possible to bring in something new either from home or
carried over from a previous day.
To do artwork, a child .might use any of a number of materials but not
anything whatsoever. There seemed to be a category of appropriate art
materials which was acknowledged by children and teachers. The children
in the day care classroom selected materials from either the art center or the
writing center, both of which contained writing and drawing materials such
as pencils, markers, crayons, paints, paper, glue, and scrounge materials
(cardboard scraps, ribbons, popsicle sticks and straws). Children could also
request or remove certain art-related materials from the teachers storage
area, particularly the masking tape. I did not see any child take something,
such as a block or a doll, from a non-art area of the room and use it for art
purposes. Rather, the distinction between art and non-art items was
maintained. When one child brought a non-art construction he had made to
an art table and kept it near him while working on an art activity, another
child told him not to do this and told the teacher about it. Although the
child did not use this construction in any way related to the art activity, it
was seen as wrong to mix art and non-art objects in this setting.
When drawing materials were used, a child could use one item, one
color, or a variety of materials and colors. Melissas use of materials when
making what she called a mask of a chipmunk can clarify these
distinctions. She used first one and then another type of brown magic
marker, then said, I guess I can get a colored pencil brown and went to
another table to find one. Drawing materials such as markers, pencils and
crayons can be used for drawing, for tracing, for coloring in, for scribbling
and for writing. These procedures may be used in combination on a single
piece of paper. That is, one could draw shapes, color them in and write
letters or words as part of making one picture. I saw different ways of
carrying out these procedures. Coloring could be accomplished with back
and forth motions, circular motions, moving back over previously colored
portions and in roller style in which color was applied in single strokes.
Drawing materials could be held and used in a number of ways. Different
coloring styles seemed to exist also. I saw one child correct anothers style,
taking a crayon and demonstrating how to do it right. Children may bear
down heavily or color lightly. Varying amounts of pressure could be used to
hold a drawing item; one child held a crayon so tightly that I could see the
pressure marks on the backs of his fingers. Children may speed up the rate
of coloring and later go back to their previous normal speed. I saw no
other instances of slowing down the rate of coloring except to return to a
previously used rate; in other words, I never saw a child go slower than a
level that child had previously used. Markings on a paper could cover
anywhere from a tiny portion of one side of a page to every inch of
available space to both sides of a page.
6
A child might stop at any point in
the use of these materials.
A way to conceive of what producing artwork looks like would be first
to imagine a child making marks on a paper. At this point, the child could
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stop or continue work. Deciding to go on, the child could add more marks
of the same or another color or introduce a new medium, depending on the
available resources and the restrictions in the environment. Abby provides
this example of how available resources can be seen to affect a drawing:
While making a picture of a polar bear she asked a teacher for a white
marker. She was told they did not have one and began using a black one
instead. In producing a completed work, a child might trace using a colored
pencil, color in the shape with a marker, then cut out the shape. Again, as
each new aspect is added, the child might stop, resulting in a finished
product, or might continue until the work is completed or abandoned. At
the end of the process, the child might clean up materials, show the work
to someone or to a number of people, put away the work, give away the
work or carry out a combination of these.
The Particular Problem of Finishing
When asked directly, the nursery school children could not or would not tell me
when a picture was finished and how they knew it was done.
7
Thus during the
day care observations, rather than questioning the children, I paid special
attention to references to finishing and to what happened to completed pictures
in the hope of finding the answer to my question through alternative means.
While I heard relatively few comments about this subject, the statements that
were made indicated that children had some idea of what being done meant.
In one sense, this was synonymous with being ready to be viewed by others, as
in these examples.

Bobby: You like it?
Joshua: Why you have to show me when its not finished, silly?
Crystal: But Nisha, look now my other cat looks.
Nisha: Pretty.
Crystal: Look how my other cat looks ugly (turning the page over). See, it
looks yucky.
Nisha: It doesnt look yucky.
Crystal: You should say it looks yucky. It doesnt have a tail. Its not
done yet.
8

As the above examples also suggest, the subject of finishing arose when it
became problematic. In another instance this issue occured when a teacher told
a group of children using markers that it was time to clean up and Crystal
protested, But I need to color mine. She was told to finish quickly and several
minutes later said, Im not done. I need to hurry up really quickly. In another
situation, Abby was instructing Nisha on how to make a greeting card. Nisha
asked Abby, Are we done? and Abby replied that they were not. When Nisha
asked her, Then what [should be done next]? Abby explained, We have to
write some letters: Happy Shamrock Day. Finally, being finished was
occasionally referred to when a child stopped work, particularly prior to
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showing the picture or creation to another. For example, Melissa brought a
sock puppet that she had been working on to a teacher saying, This is all
finished, and then discussed what she had made with the teacher. Observed
instances of what children did with completed work as well as examples of
stated intentions provide data for what one can see as constituting finishing
and being finished.
The recognition of what being finished means is complicated by the time
involved. There appear to be stages in the process of completing pictures; these
stages can be carried out over days. On the first day of my observations in the
day care center, Joshua was reminded by a teacher of the cardboard python that
hed begun on a previous day. He took out this project, worked on it for a
period of time, then put it away to complete later. On another day, the same
child burst into the room, holding out a partially completed piece of artwork,
saying, Look at this what I brought into school to color. He completed this
piece in the classroom that morning.
When the children stopped work on a piece there were a variety of finishing
touches that could be employed. Some children rolled up or folded a completed
picture prior to putting it away in an art cubby (provided by the teachers).
Artwork was also given away on completion. The intention to make a gift of
the work could be stated before the work was started or after it stopped. For
example Cathleen told a teacher before getting materials, Im going to make a
picture for you. By contrast, Charles said nothing of the destination of his
picture until he stopped drawing. At this point he said, Momma, lookit. Its a
picture for you!
As the previous example also suggests, completed work often seemed to
call for acknowledgment or recognition by others. Some children would
show their pictures to individuals who were nearby; additionally some
might seek out people throughout the room and show them what they had
made. There appeared to be expected responses when work was shown
which were revealed when a mistake was made, i.e. the expected response
was not produced. In an attempt to be unobtrusive as an observer, I made
no response when Melissa, smiling, showed me a chipmunk which she had
drawn, colored in, then cut out. Her smile faded when I made no comment.
Seeing this, I finally responded and she appeared happier; she smiled again
and provided further information about her work. This conver-sation
between Bobby and Joshua serves as another example of unfulfilled
expectations.

Bobby: Mine is done. Lookit mine. Lookit. Isnt it pretty?
Joshua: Poopy.
Bobby: Dont! Isnt it pretty?

Joshua also provided this final example of finishing which seemed to
incorporate a number of finishing procedures. He showed his picture first to me
saying, Look at this, then approached the father of another child who was
nearby and said, Look at this I made. He moved on to a student teacher saying
again, Look at this I made and finally, in another portion of the room, said,
Martha, Martha, look at this, to one of the teachers. After receiving a response
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from each person in turn, he walked across the room saying (to no one in
particular) that he would now put the picture in his cubby.
The variety in what constitutes a completed work can also be seen in the
amount of time it takes to finish. This was demonstrated dramatically by
Melissa and Molly. Melissa had worked for more than twenty minutes on two
pictures. A teacher came by and commented on Melissas work. While Melissa
and the teacher were talking, Molly sat down, put four lines on a piece of paper,
folded the paper in half and left. Mollys picture took less than two minutes to
complete.
The context in which art activities are carried out may influence
finishing. This influence can be seen in childrens demonstrated awareness
of other activities in the room and in their interactions with others. In an
example from the day care classroom, Cathleen announced her plan to
make a picture for one of the teachers. After working for a few minutes,
she got up and watched that teacher demonstrate use of what was called a
special type of ribbon at another table. Cathleen returned to her work,
finished coloring in the shape she had traced, gave the picture to the teacher
and went to use the ribbons. I observed, primarily in the nursery school,
how the social component of drawing sometimes seems to influence
finishing a picture. Children who drew steadily for twenty minutes would
speed up and stop within minutes of hearing anothers announcement of
having completed a picture. Watching this occur, I suddenly understood the
teachers dilemma, which I had both observed and experienced many times
before. At times, a teacher was assailed on all sides by children who had
finished pictures and all wanted new pieces of paper and/or their names
written on the finished pieces immediately and simultaneously. It is the sort
of occurrence which teachers might write off as being a chance event if they
consider it at all. It is fascinating to discover it to be a phenomenon that is
routinely observable, occurring in many forms at different times, and
explicable in social rather than individual terms. It is reminiscent of the
childrens verbal behavior, for like group public announcements in which
one statement is followed by similar comments immediately by the other
children, one childs finishing action is quickly followed by the same
actions being carried out by several others.
Starting or stopping drawing as an activity, not just of specific pictures,
often took place in the same way. An activity which has been totally
ignored by the children may suddenly be unable to accomodate all those
who want to participate and may just as suddenly be abandoned again. I
suspect teachers of young children have seen this take place many times and
could describe this, though they might not see it as predictable, patterned,
group behavior.
I am not suggesting that children follow blindly after leaders or that
individuals have no control over their own behavior. In fact it was not
necessarily one person who initiated these actions and made the first public
announcement every time. Nor did I see any evidence that any individual was
making a conscious effort to influence the behavior of others. However, given
that individuals act within a context, when trying to understand their actions, it
seems necessary to take account of that context, just as the individuals
themselves do.
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Conclusion
Having described the production of artwork as an ongoing accomplishment, it
is now possible to approach the data in two ways. One could try to explain the
choices and decisions made in terms of the individuals who made them.
Alternatively, one could examine what is common to all in this situation. I will
use the latter approach and attempt to present what is essential to doing
artwork and consider the data in light of the primary characteristics of these
activities.
Doing artwork consists of actions which result in a product. At the end of
the process there is something that is tangible and that can be seen. It would
logically follow, then, that much of the talk associated with these processes
concern looking and acknowledgment. Doing artwork results in something
that can be viewed and is produced by actions that are recognizable. However,
when this process is examined only in terms of the individual, the call to view
the work may have a different connatation. It may appear demanding or
egocentric when a child asks an adult look at what I made four times in a
row. I suggest that when considering repeated requests to view artwork it is
not necessary to look for the emotional causes for what an adult might
otherwise call bids for attention. Another answer is in what drawing consists
of: pictures are for looking at. Art museums provide physical acknowledgment
of this use of pictures.
Another essential aspect of artwork is that it changes while in the process
of being made. Every added element affects what has gone before and what
can come after. When reviewing the observed range of what the childrens
artwork could consist of, one senses a continuum which reflects this quality
of each step affecting others. The processes suggest shifting possibilities. Each
mark both limits what can be done and opens up new choices. Seeing the
childrens work as a series of tasks or stages, after any of which the product
may be finished, is in keeping with this characteristic of what doing art
would consist of. Thus what constitutes finished work is not merely the
arbitrary decision of an artist. The progress of the activity is part of the
process.
Further, the materials and environment interact and influence the process of
doing artwork. Switching pens, dipping a brush in paint, reaching for a scissors
and similar actions that are part of these activities allow for a shift in attention.
The focus on drawing a picture, for example, is something that must be
maintained through these potential distraction points. When there is something
interesting to look at, these pauses in the activity allow for the opportunity to
capture the childs attention. Furthermore the noise of a busy classroom may
intrude at any time, again acting as a potential distraction from whichever task
is at hand.
Examination of the shared characteristics of the activities in question
reveals the logic of the childrens actions. The purpose of shifting the focus
from the individual is not to deny the possible role of individual emotions
or biographies in what is taking place but rather to credit the individuals
choices by examining ongoing actions within their natural context. By doing
so, these actions can be seen as making sense within that particular context.
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The recognition of the elements common to any carrying out of that activity
clarifies individual action.
One could easily look at my observations and see chaos. Rather than
attributing what is observed to drives, needs or the imposed categories of
child and childish behavior, an order is revealed by focusing on the actual
practices of the children. The children I observed did not necessarily act in
accordance with adult expections of what working at an activity should
look like. The children did not always complete a task in an orderly
fashion. They looked up from their work and paid attention to other things
not related to the activity at hand. Several talked to others across the room.
Children left what they were doing then and came back. They talked, sang,
hummed, and shifted in their chairs, while working on their projects. Some
would demand attention and acknowledgment for their artwork and do so
repeatedly. Yet when one takes seriously what the children were doing and
examines their actions in context, what appeared as chaos begins to resolve
into orderly actions. By shifting the focus from how much adult knowledge
children have acquired to what it is that children know, both types of
knowledge become available. The benefit of not accepting adult knowledge
as the final standard against which all action should be measured is that
childrens knowledge, competence, and experience can be viewed in their
own right.
The question of the value of this investigation for teachers remains to be
addressed. By looking at classroom activities from a sociological perspective
new aspects of these familar activities were uncovered. This study revealed
childrens competence in a number of areas. Children were shown to be solving
problems that are not customarily recognized. It is generally assumed that
maintaining focus while doing artwork is not problematic. Yet the natural
pauses in such activities allow for potential distraction throughout the course of
the activity. Children routinely carry out these art activities despite challenges in
the environment and the activities themselves. In their use of art and non-art
materials, children distinguish between complex categories that do not have
clear boundaries.
That childrens actions may be logical, as the evidence of this study suggests,
is contrary to common expections about what it means to be an adult or a child.
Assumptions regarding childrens incompetence mask aspects of ordinary
classroom activities, particularly those aspects in which childrens knowledge
and competence may be seen. The recognition of the possible logic of childrens
actions may be of use to teachers. It was a revelation to me that childrens
finishing patterns could be seen as orderly. Having recognized this, I could
make use of this knowledge in my encounters with children as a teacher. I could
prepare myself for waves of finishing and sudden shifts from one activity to
another. Seeing the pattern in when children look up from an activity could
guide a teacher who wishes to encourage focus in children. Waiting for a
natural pause in an activity in speaking to a child would allow a teacher to limit
interruptions. Furthermore, an understanding of how distractions occur in a
classroom could be of interest to a teacher working with a child who seems
easily distracted.
This study demonstrates the value of examining the actions of individuals by
194
looking at what is common to the experience of any individual. To the extent
that this perspective illuminated my data, I would recommend such an
approach to teachers in their attempts to understand occurences in their own
classrooms.
Notes
1 I would like to thank Fran Waksler and Michael Lynch for their thoughtful criticism
of earlier versions of this paper. I would also like to express my appreciation to Fran
Waksler for her extremely useful organizational suggestions.
2 This paper is addressed to both sociologists and teachers. Although I have tried to
minimize use of the jargon of either field, differences in the theoretical background
and experience of the two groups may lead to certain aspects of the paper appearing
obvious to one while strange to the other. A teacher is likely to be familiar with what
is meant by free play and project but may find the divergence from developmental
theory surprising. On the other hand, to a sociologist my contrasting of my
theoretical statements with certain psychological stand-points may appear
unnecessary. It is beyond the scope of this paper to provide an overview of
developmental theory and it is not my purpose to argue with developmental theory
as it is presented to teachers. However, its focus on development as an individual
process seems to orient theorists toward the individual. In my experience as an
educator, it is theories based on the individual which form the basis of educational
theory and practice. Thus in my discussion of social context, I contrast my
theoretical standpoint to that which focuses on the individual and looks for its
explanations within the individual.
3 I do not mean to imply that this difference in the organization of the classrooms
between the settings is due to some difference between day care and nursery school.
In referring to the day care or nursery school rooms, I am primarily distinguishing
between the different sites used for my observations.
4 There was a notable instance of how a child tried to account for my presence and
actions. This child paused in her approach to the drawing table and asked me if I
was drawing. I told her that I wasnt drawing. She then asked why I was writing. I
replied that I wanted to remember what was happening in school. Again she asked
why and I said that it was because I was interested. She said, Our other teachers
arent interested in us and sat down to draw.
5 Parten, 1932.
6 Generally, only one side of a page was used. In all my observations I saw a child
color on both sides of a page twice.
7 It is possible that this is not a question that is easy to answer by anyone. It might be
interesting to question artists to find out whether they would consider such a
question answerable.
8 This is not to suggest that children only showed finished pictures to others. My data
indicates otherwise; I have numerous examples of children showing others works in
progress.
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Chapter 14

On the Analysability of Stories by
Children
Harvey Sacks
Commentary
This article may well be the most complicated of those included in this book. It
certainly requires careful and attentive reading. I provide a rather extended
introduction to facilitate understanding of this most valuable article.
Futhermore, in the course of the article I add, in brackets, explanatory notes to
assist readers in staying on course.
Sacks is in fact only incidentally concerned with children here; his major
focus is on how utterances (verbal statements) are understandable.
Nonetheless, his article can move the sociological study of children to a new
level of complexity and sophistication. Sacks work reinforces the claims of
Mackay and other authors in this volume about childrens competence, for the
ability to describe with words embodies extensive knowledge about how the
world looks from the perspective of the language being used to describe it. In
the Concluding Note I present some specific implications of Sacks ideas for the
study of children.
This article displays both the insights and the problems inherent in a detailed
and thoroughgoing analysis of that which is taken for granted. It is difficult to
write about that which is not customarily written or talked about, and difficult
to write about what everyone knows, but it is of great sociological significance
to recognize what and how much everyone knows and how much can be heard
in the simplest of utterances and seen in the simplest of events. Sacks repetition
may initially seem a stylistic drawback but each time he returns to the utterance
under analysis he discovers and presents new aspects of it.
Sacks particular concern is with what people in everyday life can hear or
understand when an utterance is made. He documents the extensive
information that is implicit in even the simplest of utterances. His focus is not
on what people mean or intend by what they say but rather on what can be
inferred or gleaned by others from what is said. Through repeated examination
of the same two sentences from a childs story, he identifies a wealth of
From Directions in Sodolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. Edited by
John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes (1972). Reprinted by permission of Basil Blackwell
Inc. and Dell Hymes. Originally published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
196
information available, taken-for-granted, used, yet seldom actually recognized.
He shows just how much can be gleaned from two short sentences. He does not
suggest that children necessarily intend all that can be heard in what they say,
but implicit in his argument is that childrens utterances can be heard as
sophisticated formulations of the social world in which they live. To learn to use
language is to learn extensive details about the social world. Embedded in
language are a multitude of claims about what the world is like. As children
learn to talk, their use of the categories of talk (words) structures their view of
the world and their category use is heard by others in terms of the assumptions
embedded in such categories.
Sacks begins with a consideration of the process of describing. Using two
sentences uttered by a child, he asks if these sentences can be heard, by anyone
who hears them uttered, as a description of an event. To demonstrate that they
can be heard as such, he details some of the descriptive information that can be
gleaned from the utterance. Sacks is concerned with description because it is an
important feature of social life, a common everyday activity, a crucial feature of
talk, and thus important data for sociologists. Even though it is so
fundamental a process, seldom in everyday life is its full complexity recognized.
Sacks details this complexity, bringing to light taken-for-granted features of talk
that are surprising in their multiplicity.
In the course of his article Sacks offers a number of maxims or rules that
ordinary members of society use in making sense out of the world. Since these
maxims are somewhat complex and apt to be confusingfor they are rules that
members themselves do not articulateI introduce the major ones here. They may
not be immediately understandable but their presentation here provides an initial
acquaintance with them. This section can also serve as a useful place to which to
refer as a way of maintaining orientation to Sacks developing argument.
Sacks Maxims*
Recognizing a description as a description entails understanding what it is about.
Sacks maxims provide rules for just how such understanding is achieved in
everyday life. Looking at an utterance, Sacks considers what a listener hears
what any listener can hearand how that can be heard, for what is heard goes
well beyond what is said. Similarly, in looking at events, he considers what any
observer can seeand how that can be seen. The first section of Sacks article,
Problems in recognizing possible descriptions, provides an overview of the issues
with which he is dealing; in the remainder of the article he elaborates on these ideas.
Sacks here takes as his sociological task the identification of the taken-for-
granted rules that underlie everyday talk. He is not claiming that the maxims he
identifies are in any absolute sense true or correct but he is asserting that
members use these maxims, and thus they are of interest to sociologists. When he
* In the remainder of these introductory remarks I draw liberally on Sacks words as
well as formulating his ideas in my own words. The use of quotation marks and page
references would only complicate an already complicated undertaking. Those who
would cite or quote Sacks should work directly from the text of his article, which
follows my commentary.
197
On the Analysability of Stories by Children
asserts of a particular utterance hear it that way or see it that way, he himself
is not claiming that is what one should do; rather he is saying that in everday life
we are expected to hear it or see it that way and that indeed we do so. It may even
turn out that we are wrong and confusion develops but even in such a case
clarification may entail reference to the maxims that have been violated.
In their everyday lives, people create categories (of people, objects, acts, etc.)
and develop rules for assigning members (instances) to categories. Thus the
category teacher includes many members, many teachers. How one assigns a
person to a category, e.g. how one decides that a person is a teacher, is a
complex process. Its complexity may well be obscured because on the surface it
looks so common-sensical but consider the following: On the first day of class,
how do students know that a particular person is the teacher? Here I simply
suggest a few alternatives: that person may be someone in the wrong room, an
impostor, an older student.
Any set of categories that goes together Sacks terms a membership
categorization device, i.e. a device (method) for categorizing members
(instances). A device also includes the actual members as well as rules for how
members are assigned to categories. Continuing with the above example, the
categories of teacher, student, and administrator; members of these categories;
and the rules for assigning members to these categories constitute a membership
categorization device. Sacks identifies two rules which people use to fit
instances to categories:

1 the economy (reference satisfactoriness) rule: assigning a person (or
object or thing) to one category can be sufficient to identify that
person. For example, for students purposes it is sufficient to know that
I am the teacher of a particular course; it is not necessary (though it
may be interesting) to know my marital status, recreational
preferences, race, etc.
2 the consistency (relevance) rule: if a categorization device contains a set of
categories (e.g. teachers, students, administrators), if one category is used
to identify a person, other categories may be used to categorize other
members. For example, if I am talking about teachers, I can move to
discussion of students or administrators without changing the subject.

Against the background of rule 2, Sacks provides a subsidiary rule which he
calls a hearers maxim since it is a rule for how utterances can be heard:

the consistency rule corollary: if two categories are presented and can be
heard as categories from the same collection (device), then: hear them that
way. For example, if someone is talking about teachers and then begins to
discuss administrators, I hear them to be talking about school
administrators, not IBM or government administrators.

Sacks goes to provide another hearers maxim:

If a number of categories constitute a set or team such that only some
members from each category constitute each set (in Sacks terms, if
devices are duplicatively organized), and if categories can be heard as a
198
set, then: hear them as such. If, for example, I hear talk by teachers about
students, I hear, if I can, that they are talking about their students. A
teacher and that teachers students can be seen as constituting a set.
Alternatively, I do not hear a sociology teachers reference to students as
to ballet students.

Some activities are bound to categories. Thus those in the category of teacher
are expected to engage in the activity of teaching, students in the activity of
studying. With this ideas in mind, Sacks provides the hearers maxim:

If a number of possible categories are available and a category-bound
activity is presented, hear at least that category to which the activity is
bound.

Sacks then elaborates on the idea of category-bound activities in the process of
articulating viewers maxims, rules that people follow in making sense of what
they see. Thus:

If one sees a category-bound activity being done and if one can see it as
being done by a member of a category to which the activity is bound,
then: see it that way. If I walk into a classroom and see someone teaching,
I see that person as the teacher. Indeed it may be that students are doing
class presentations and the person teaching is in fact a student. If,
however, the person teaching looks too young to be a teacher, I may
decide that I cannot see it [teaching] as being done by a member of a
category to which the activity is bound, in which case I may look
elsewhere for the real teacher or simply be puzzled.
If there is a norm (expectation) that B follows A, then when A and B occur,
see them as following the norm. For example, if a student raises a hand
and a teacher calls on that student, I see the teacher as calling on the
student because of the raised hand. (It may have been, however, that the
teacher was going to call on the student anyway and/or that the student
was not raising a hand but simply stretching.)
Futhermore, if those who engage in the acts (A and B) are members of
categories for whom those actions are proper, see them as such. Thus if a
student raises a hand, it makes sense to me. If a teacher raises a hand, I
find such an action on the face of it meaningless.

Sacks is not presenting a complete analysis of an utterance; rather he is
exploring the available paths of analysis. Furthermore, it should be noted again,
he is not offering these rules as how things ought to be, how they must be, or
how he sees them. He is simply trying to spell out the rules that people use in
their everyday lives. His reference (below) to subjectivisma term that refers to
talking ones own views as everyones viewsindicates his awareness that
readers might, erroneously, say to him: Thats only the way you hear those
sentences. In response he claims that he is not assuming that others views are
like his; rather his empirical evidence suggests that in fact others hear things as
199
he does and, furthermore, he asks readers to assess his maxims on the basis of
their own experiences. If indeed they hear what he hears, then he cannot be
accused of subjectivism.
Sacks invites readers to join him in this exploration as he moves from idea to
idea. The best test of his ideas is an examination of their use in ones own
everyday life. This article is best read as a joint venture of author and reader.
F.C.W.
In this chapter I intend, first, to present and employ several of the more basic
concepts and techniques which I shall be using. Since most of those I shall use at
this point may also be found in the paper An initial investigation of the
usability of conversational data for doing sociology (Sacks, 1972), the
discussion here may be seen as reintroducing and extending the results
developed there. Second, I shall focus on the activity doing describing and the
correlative activity recognizing a description, activities which members may
be said to do, and which therefore are phenomena which sociologists and
anthropologists must aim to be able to describe. It will initially be by reference
to an examination of instances of members describings that my attempts to
show how sociologists might solve their own problem of constructing
descriptions will be developed. Proceeding in the fashion I have proposed will
permit a focus on several central and neglected issues which social science must
face, most particularly, the problem of members knowledge and the problem of
relevance. Let us then begin.
Problems in Recognizing Possible Descriptions
The initial data are the first two sentences from a story offered by a 2 years
and 9 months old girl to the author of the book Children Tell Stories. They are,
The baby cried. The mommy picked it up. I shall first make several
observations about these sentences. Before doing so, however, let me note: if
these observations strike you as a ranker sort of subjectivism, then I ask you to
read on just far enough to see whether it is or is not the case that the
observations are both relevant and defensible. When I hear The baby cried.
The mommy picked it up, one thing I hear is that the mommy who picks the
baby up is the mommy of that baby. [Readers might be tempted to say, Of
course. Thats obvious. But how does one know that when the sentence itself
does not say so? How one can hear that the mommy is the mommy of the baby
when it is not said is the problem Sacks is addressing and for which he wants to
construct an explanatory apparatus.] That is a first observation. (You will, of
course, notice that the second sentence does not contain a genitive. It does not
read its mommy picked it up, or variants thereof.) Now it is not only that I
hear that the mommy is the mommy of that baby, but I feel rather confident
that at least many of the natives among you hear that also. That is a second
observation. One of my tasks is going to be to construct an apparatus which
200
will provide for the foregoing facts to have occurred; an apparatus, i.e. which
will show how it is that we come to hear the fragment as we do.
Some more: I take it we hear two sentences. Call the first [sentence] S
1
and
the second S
2
; the first reports an occurrence [that we can call] O
1
and the
second reports an occurrence [that we can call] O
2
. Now, I take it that we hear
that as S
2
follows S
1,
so O
2
follows O
1
. This is a third observation. And also, we
hear that O
2
occurs because of O
1
, i.e. the explanation for O
2
occurring is that
O
1
did. That is a fourth observation. I want the apparatus to show how we
come to hear those facts also. If I asked you to explain the group of
observations which I have made, observations which you could have made just
as welland let me note, they are not proposed as sociological findings, but
rather do they pose some of the problems which social science shall have to
resolveyou might say something like the following: we hear that it is the
mommy of the baby, who picks the baby up because shes the one who ought to
pick it up, and (you might eventually add) if shes the one who ought to pick it
up, and it was picked up by somebody who could be her, then it was her, or was
probably her.
[Again, readers might respond, Of course, but, again, none of this
information is contained in the sentence itself but is something that is brought
to the sentence. That one hears all this information is obvious; how one comes
to hear it is quite perplexing.]
You might go on: while it is quite clear that not any two consecutive sentences,
not even any consecutive sentences that report occurrences, are heard, and properly
heard, as reporting that the occurrences have occurred in the order which the
sentences have, if the occurrences ought to occur in that order, and if there if no
information to the contrary (such as a phrase at the beginning of the second, like
before that, however), then the order of the sentences indicates the order of the
occurrences. And these two sentences do present the order of the occurrences they
report in the proper order for such occurrences. If the baby cried, it ought to have
started crying before the mother picked it up, and not after. Hearing it that way,
the second sentence is explained by the first; hearing them as consecutive or with
the second preceding the first, some further explanation is needed, and none being
present, we may suppose that it is not needed.
Now let me make a fifth observation: all of the foregoing can be done by
many or perhaps any of us without knowing what baby or what mommy it is
that might be being talked of. With this fifth observation it may now be noticed
that what weve essentially been saying so far is that the pair of sentences seems
to satisfy what a member might require of some pair of sentences for them to be
recognizable as a possible description. They sound like a description, and
some form of words can, apparently, sound like a description. To recognize that
some form of words is a possible description does not require that one must first
inspect the circumstances it may be characterizing.
[There is a group game played by adults called Dictionary, in which one
person selects a word whose definition is unknown to the others. The others
each make up a definition and participants vote on which one of the definitions
(the unidentified dictionary definiton or one of the made-up definitions) sounds
correct. Those making up definitions seek to construct ones that sound right,
that sound like a possible dictionary definition. The real meaning of the word
201
is irrelevant to the game. This game is constructed on the very state of affairs
that Sacks is describing.
The point Sacks makes in the following paragraph is that members
descriptions of the social world and how it works is useful information for
sociologists. Sociologists need not be concerned with how it really works
perhaps an impossible taskbut can focus on how members see the situations
in which they are acting. The concern throughout this book with how children
define situationsrather than what situations are really likeexemplifies
Sacks point here.]
That possible descriptions are recognizable as such is quite an important fact,
for members, and for social scientists. The reader ought to be able to think out
some of its import for members, e.g. the economies it affords them. It is the latter
clause, and for social scientists, that I now wish to attend to. Were it not so both
that members have an activity they do, describing, and that at least some cases
of that activity produce, for them, forms of words recognizable as at least possible
descriptions without having to do an inspection of the circumstances they might
characterize, then it might well be that social science would necessarily be the last
of the sciences to be made do-able. For, unless social scientists could study such
things as these recognizable descriptions, we might only be able to investigate
such activities of members as in one or another way turned on their knowledge
of the world when social scientists could employ some established, presumptively
correct scientific characterizations of the phenomena members were presumably
dealing with and knowing about. If, however, members have a phenomenon,
possible descriptions which are recognizable per se, then one need not in the
instance know how it is that babies and mommies do behave to examine the
composition of such possible descriptions as members produce and recognize.
Sociology and anthropology need not await developments in botany or genetics
or analyses of the light spectra to gain a secure position from which members
knowledge, and the activities for which it is relevant, might be investigated. What
one ought to seek to build is an apparatus which will provide for how it is that
any activities, which members do in such a way as to be recognizable as such to
members, are done, and done recognizably. Such an apparatus will, of course, have
to generate and provide for the recognizability of more than just possible
descriptions, and in later discussions we shall be engaged in providing for such
activities as inviting, warning, and so forth, as the data we consider will permit
and require.
My reason for having gone through the observations I have so far made was
to give you some sense, right off, of the fine power of a culture. It does not, so to
speak, merely fill brains in roughly the same way, it fills them so that they are
alike in fine detail. The sentences we are considering are after all rather minor,
and yet all of you, or many of you, hear just what I said you heard, and many of
us are quite unacquainted with each other. I am, then, dealing with something
real and something finely powerful.
Membership Categorization Devices
We may begin to work at the construction of the apparatus. Im going to
introduce several of the terms we need. The first term is membership
202
categorization device (or just categorization device). [An explanation of this
term to supplement Sacks is available in the introduction to this paper.] By this
term I shall intend: any collection of membership categories, containing at least
a category, which may be applied to some population containing at least a
member, so as to provide, by the use of some rules of application, for the pairing
of at least a population member and a categorization device member. A device is
then a collection plus rules of application.
An instance of a categorization device is the one called sex; its collection
is the two categories (male, female). It is important to observe that a
collection consists of categories that go together. For now that may merely
be seen as a constraint of the following sort: I could say that some set of
categories was a collection, and be wrong. [Sacks is not saying that he does
not care about being wrong; he is simply recogizing that at this point his data
is incomplete, his conclusions tentative.] I shall present some rules of
application very shortly.
Before doing that, however, let me observe that baby and mommy can
be seen to be categories from one collection: the collection whose device is
called family and which consists of such categories as (baby, mommy,
daddy) where by we mean that there are others, but not any others,
e.g. shortstop.
[In what follows Sacks proceeds to spell out some rules by which categories
are applied to particular instances. These are rules that people use in their
everyday life, though they seldom articulate them. As he suggests later in this
section, these rules govern how one hears what people say.]
Let me introduce a few rules of application. It may be observed that if a
member uses a single category from any membership categorization device,
then they can be recognized to be doing adequate reference to a person. We may
put the observation in a negative form: it is not necessary that some multiple of
categories from categorization devices be employed for recognition that a
person is being referred to, to be made; a single category will do. (I do not mean
by this that more cannot be used, only that for reference to persons to be
recognized more need not be used.) With that observation we can formulate a
reference satisfactoriness rule, which we call the economy rule. It holds: a
single category from any membership categorization device can be referentially
adequate.
A second rule I call the consistency rule. It holds: if some population of
persons is being categorized, and if a category from some devices collection has
been used to categorize a. first member of the population, then that category or
other categories of the same collection may be used to categorize further
members of the population. The former rule was a reference satisfactoriness
rule; this latter one is a relevance rule (Sacks, 1972).
The economy rule having provided for the adequate reference of baby, the
consistency rule tells us that if the first person has been categorized as baby,
then further persons may be referred to by other categories of a collection of
which they are a member, and thus that such other categories as mommy and
daddy are relevant given the use of baby.
While in its currently weak form and alone, the consistency rule may
exclude no category of any device, even in this weak form (the may
formsI shall eventually introduce a must form), a corollary of it will
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prove to be useful. The corollary is a hearers maxim. It holds: if two or
more categories are used to categorize two or more members of some
population, and those categories can be heard as categories from the same
collection, then: hear them that way. Let us call the foregoing the
consistency rule corollary. It has the following sort of usefulness. Various
membership categorization-device categories can be said to be ambiguous.
That is, the same categorial word is a term occurring in several distinct
devices, and can in each have a quite different reference; they may or may
not be combinably usable in regard to a single person. So, e.g. baby occurs
in the device family and also in the device stage of life whose categories
are such as baby, child,adult. A hearer who can use the consistency
rule corollary will regularly not even notice that there might be an
ambiguity in the use of some category among a group which it can be used
to hear as produced via the consistency rule.
It is, of course, clear that the two categories baby are sometimes
combinably referential and sometimes not. A woman may refer to someone as
my baby with no suggestion that she is using the category that occurs in the
stage of life device; her baby may be a full-fledged adult. In the case at hand
that problem does not occur, and we shall be able to provide the bases for it not
occurring, i.e. the bases for the legitimacy of hearing the single term baby as
referring to a person located by reference both to the device family and to the
device stage of life.
With this, let us modify the observation on the consistency rule as follows:
The consistency rule tells us that if a first person has been categorized as baby,
the further persons may be referred to by categories from either the device
family or from the device stage of life. However, if a hearer has a second
category which can be heard as consistent with one locus of a first, then the first
is to be heard as at least consistent with the second.
Given the foregoing, we may proceed to show how the combined reference
of baby is heard for our two sentences, and also how the mommy is heard as
the mommy of the baby. We shall deal with the latter task first, and we assume
from now on that the consistency rule corollary has yielded at least that baby
and mommy are heard as from the device family. We assume that without
prejudice to the further fact that baby is also heard as baby from the device
stage of life.
The device family is one of a series which you may think of by a
prototypical name team. One central property of such devices is that they
are what I am going to call duplicatively organized. I mean by the use of
that term to point out the following: When such a device is used on a
population, what is done is to take its categories, treat the set of categories as
defining a unit, and place members of the population into cases of the unit. If
a population is so treated and is then counted, one counts not numbers of
daddies, numbers of mommies, and numbers of babies but numbers of
familiesnumbers of whole families, numbers of families without fathers,
etc. A population so treated is partitioned into cases of the unit, cases for
which what properly holds is that the various persons partitioned into any
case are coincumbents of that case.
[Not all devices are duplicatively organized. Stage of life, for example, is
not. The categories baby, child,adult are not the sources of sets; there is
204
no meaningful unit made up of merely one or more members from each stage of
life. Sacks makes this distinction for purposes that are clarified in the next
paragraph.]
There are hearers maxims which correspond to these ways of dealing with
populations categorized by way of duplicatively organized devices. One that
is relevant to our current task holds: If some population has been categorized
by use of categories from some device whose collection has the duplicative
organization property, and a member is presented with a categorized
population which can be heard as coincumbents of a case of that devices unit,
then: Hear it that way. (I will consider the underscored phrase shortly.) Now
let it be noticed that this rule is of far more general scope than we may seem to
need. In focusing on a property like duplicative organization it permits a
determination of an expectation (of social scientists) as to how some
categorized population will be heard independently of a determination of
how it is heard. It is then formal and predictive, as well, of course, as quite
general.
Now, by the phrase can be heard we mean to rule out predictions of the
following sort. Some duplicatively organized devices have proper numbers of
incumbents for certain categories of any unit. (At any given time a nation-
state may have but one president, a family but one father, a baseball team but
one shortshop on the field, etc.) If more incumbents of a category are
proposed as present in the population that a units case can properly take,
then the can be heard constraint is not satisfied, and a prediction would not
be made.
Category-Bound Activities
The foregoing analysis shows us then how it is that we come to hear, given
the fact that the device family is duplicatively organized and the can be
heard constraint being satisfied, the mommy to be the mommy of the
baby. It does, of course, much more than that. It permits us to predict, and
to understand how we can predict, that a statement such as The first
baseman looked around. The third baseman scratched himself will be heard
as saying the first baseman of the team of which the third baseman is also a
player and its converse.
Or, putting the claim more precisely, it shows us how, in partin part
because for the materials at hand it happens that there are other means for
providing that the same hearing be made, means which can operate in
combination with the foregoing, otherwise sufficient ones, to further assure the
hearings we have observed. That will be done in the next section. Let us now
undertake our second task, to show how the baby is heard in its combined
form, i.e. as the category with that name from both the stage of life device and
from the family device.
Let me introduce a term which I am going to call category-bound activities.
While I shall not now give an intendedly careful definition of the term, I shall
indicate what I mean to notice with it and then in a while offer a procedure for
determining that some of its proposed cases are indeed cases of it. By the term I
intend to notice that many activities are taken by members to be done by some
205
particular or several particular categories of members where the categories are
categories from membership categorization devices.
Let me notice then, as is obvious to you, that cry is bound to baby, i.e. to
the category baby which is a member of the collection from the stage of life
device. Again, the fact that members know that this is so only serves, for the
social scientist, to pose some problem. What we want is to construct some
means by reference to which a class, which proposedly contains at least the
activity-category cry and presumably others, may have the inclusion of its
candidate-members assessed. We will not be claiming that the procedure is
definitive as to exclusion of a candidate-member, but we will claim that it is
definitive as to inclusion of a candidate-member.
It may be observed that the members of the stage of life collection are
positioned (babyadolescentadult), an observation which, for
now, we shall leave unexamined. I want to describe a procedure for
praising or degrading members, the operation of which consists of the use
of the fact that some activities are category bound. If there are such
procedures, they will provide one strong sense of the notion category-
bound activities and also will provide, for any given candidate activity, a
means for warrantably deciding that it is a member of the class of category-
bound activities.
For some positioned-category devices it can be said as between any two
categories of such a device that A is either higher or lower than B, and if A is
higher than B, and B is higher than C, then A is higher than C.
We have some activity which is a candidate-member of the class category-
bound activities and which is proposedly bound to some category C. Then, a
member of either A or B who does that activity may be seen to be degrading
himself, and may be said to be acting like a C. Alternatively, if some candidate
activity is proposedly bound to A, a member of C who does it is subject to being
said to be acting like an A, where that assertion constitutes praising.
[In this section Sacks is searching for ways in which category-bound
activities can be identified. One way (exemplified by note 1) is to see that an
activity can be praised when performed by a member of one category and
blamed when performed by a member of another. Thus the activity is bound
to the category for which it is viewed as routine and not bound to that
category for which it is viewed as in some sense unusual. A second way of
identifying an activity as category bound (exemplified in note 2) is to see one
activity (hair styling) as suggesting or hinting at another (homosexuality).
Sacks is in no way reinforcing stereotypes; he is simply recognizing those
links that are made by people in everyday life and exploring how those links
are in fact made. If on the basis of one activity we predict that someone is a
member of a particular category, then there is evidence that that activity is
category-bound.]
If, using the stage of life categories, we subject crying to such a test, we do
find that its candidacy as a member of the class category-bound activities is
warrantable. In the case of crying the results are even stronger. For, it appears,
if a baby is subject to some circumstances which would for such a one warrant
crying, and he does not, then his not crying is observable, and may be used to
propose that he is acting like a big boy, where that assertion is taken to be
praise.
1
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The foregoing procedure can, obviously enough, be used for other devices
and other candidate activities. Other procedures may also be used, e.g. one way
to decide that an activity is category bound is to see whether, the fact of
membership being unknown, it can be hinted at by naming the activity as
something one does.
2
Having constructed a procedure which can warrant the candidacy of some
activity as a member of the class category-bound activities, and which
warrants the membership of cry and provides for its being bound to baby, i.e.
that category baby which is a member of the stage of life collection, we move
on to see how it is that the baby in our sentence is heard in the combined
reference we have proposed.
We need, first, another hearers maxim. If a category-bound activity is
asserted to have been done by a member of some category where, if that
category is ambiguous (i.e. is a member of at least two different devices) but
where, at least for one of those devices, the asserted activity is category bound
to the given category, then hear that at least the category from the device to
which it is bound is being asserted to hold.
The foregoing maxim will then provide for hearing The baby cried, as
referring to at least baby from the stage of life device. The results obtained
from the use of the consistency rule corollary, being independent of that, are
combinable with it. The consistency rule corollary gave us at least that the
baby was the category from the device family. The combination gives us
both.
If our analysis seems altogether too complicated for the rather simple facts
we have been examining, then we invite the reader to consider that our
machinery has intendedly been overbuilt. That is to say it may turn out that
the elaborateness of our analysis, or its apparent elaborateness, will disappear
when one begins to consider the amount of work that the very same machinery
can perform.
In the next section I will attempt to show that the two sentences The baby
cried. The mommy picked it up constitute a possible description.
Identifying Possible Descriptions
I shall focus next on the fact that an activity can be category bound and then on
the import of there being a norm which provides for some second activity, given
the occurrence of a first, considering both of these with regard to the
correctness, for members, of possible description.
Let me for the moment leave aside our two sentences and consider some
observations on how it is that I see, and take it you see, describable
occurrences. Suppose you are standing somewhere, and you see a person you
dont know. The person cries. Now, if I can, I will see that what has happened
is that a baby cried. [Note that Sacks says if I can; clearly there are occasions
in which one cannot so see things, and one doesnt.] And I take it that you
will, if you can, see that too. Thats a first pair of observations. Suppose again
you are standing somewhere and you see two people you dont know. Suppose
further than one cries, and the other picks up the one who is crying. Now, if I
can, I will see that what has happened is that a baby cried and its mother
207
picked it up. And I take it that you will, if you can, see that too. Thats a
second pair of observations.
Consider the first pair of observations. The modifying phrases, to deal with
them first, refer simply to the possibility that the category baby might be
obviously inapplicable to the crier. By reference to the stage of life collection
the crier may be seen to be an adult. And that being so, the if can
constraint wouldnt be satisfied. But there are certainly other possible
characterizations of the crying person. For example, without respect to the
fact that it is a baby, it could be either male or female, and nonetheless I
would not, and I take it you would not, seeing the scene, see that a male cried
if we could see that a baby cried.
The pair of observations suggest the following viewers maxim: If a
member sees a category-bound activity being done, then, if one can see it
being done by a member of a category to which the activity is bound, then:
See it that way. The viewers maxim is another relevance rule in that it
proposes that for an observer of a category-bound activity the category to
which the activity is bound has a special relevance for formulating an
identification of its doer.
Consider the second pair of observations. As members you, of course,
know that there is a norm which might be written as: A mother ought to try
to soothe her crying baby. I, and you, not only know that there is such a
norm but, as you may recall, we used it in doing our hearing of The baby
cried. The mommy picked it up. In addition to the fact of duplicative
organization, the norm was relevant in bringing us to hear that it was the
mommy of the baby who did the picking up. While we would have heard
that it was the mommy of the baby for other pairs of activities in which the
two were involved (but not for any pair), the fact that the pair were relatable
via a norm which assigns the mother of the baby that duty may have
operated in combination with the duplicative organization to assure our
hearing that it was she who did it.
Leaving aside the hearing of the sentence, we are led to construct another
viewers maxim: If one sees a pair of actions which can be related via the
operation of a norm that provides for the second given the first, where the doers
can be seen as members of the categories the norm provides as proper for that
pair of actions, then: (a) See that the doers are such-members and (b) see the
second as done in conformity with the norm.
This second viewers maxim suggests an observation about norms. In the
sociological and anthropological literature, the focus on norms is on the
conditions under which and the extent to which they govern, or can be seen by
social scientists to govern, the relevant actions of those members whose actions
they ought to control. While such matters are, of course, important, our
viewers maxim suggests other importances of norms, for members.
Viewers use norms to provide some of the orderliness, and proper
orderliness, of the activities they observe. Via some norm two activities may be
made observable as a sequentially ordered pair. That is, viewers use norms to
explain both the occurrence of some activity given the occurrence of another
and also its sequential position with regard to the other, e.g. that it follows the
other, or precedes it. That is a first importance. Second, viewers use norms to
provide the relevant membership categories in terms of which they formulate
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identifications of the doers of those activities for which the norms are
appropriate.
Now let me observe, viewers may use norms in each of the preceding ways,
and feel confident in their usage without engaging in such an investigation as
would serve to warrant the correctness of their usages. This last observation is
worth some further thought.
We may, at least initially, put the matter thus: For viewers, the usability of the
viewers maxims serves to warrant the correctness of their observations. And
that is then to say, the usability of the viewers maxims provides for the
recognizability of the correctness of the observations done via those maxims.
And that is then to say, correct observations or, at least, possible correct
observations are recognizable.
(Members feel no need in warranting their observation, in recognizing its
correctness to do such a thing as to ask the woman whether she is the mother of
the baby,
3
or to ask her whether she picked it up because it was crying, i.e. they
feel no such need so long as the viewers maxims are usable.)
[Elsewhere in this book I have suggested using the term adult in place of the
terms parent, mother, and father unless parenthood is both known and at issue.
Sacks point here provides the grounds for such a recommendation: although
members may feel that assumptions of parenthood are warranted, sociologists who
make such assumptions end up assuming that which they are claiming to
investigate; in Mackays terms, they are confusing topic and resource.]
In short: Correctness is recognizable, and there are some exceedingly nice
ties between recognizably correct description and recognizably correct
observations. One such tie which is relevant to the tasks we have undertaken is:
A string of sentences which may be heard via the hearers maxims, as having
been produced by use of the viewers maxims, will be heard as a recognizably
correct possible description.
Sequential Ordering
The rest of this chapter will be devoted to two tasks. I shall try to develop some
further rewards of the analysis so far assembled, some consequences it throws
off; and to show also how it is that the two sentences (The baby cried. The
mommy picked it up) can warrantably be said to be from a story. I start with
the latter task.
[In what follows, Sacks general concern is with rules that govern talk. He
focuses on adult rules for children but provides a valuable framework that
could be used to examine the rules that children follow when they are with one
another.]
It ought to be apparent that the fact that the children whose talk is reported
in Children Tell Stories were asked to tell a story is not definitive of their having
done so. It is at least possible that the younger ones among them are not capable
of building stories, of building talk that is recognizable as a story, or, at least,
as a possible story.
It happens to be correct, for Western literature, that if some piece of talk is a
possible description it is also, and thereby a possible story or story part. It
appears, therefore, that having established that the two sentences are a possible
209
description, I have also, and thereby, established that they are possibly (at least
part of) a story. To stop now would, however involve ignoring some story-
relevant aspects of the given sentences which are both interesting and
subjectable to analysis. So I go on.
Certain characteristics are quite distinctive to stories. For example, there
are characteristic endings (And they lived happily ever after) and
characteristic beginnings (once upon a time). I shall consider whether the
possible story, a fragment of which we have been investigating, can be said
(and I mean here, as throughout, warrantably said) to close with what is
recognizable as an ending and to start with what is recognizable as a
beginning.
In suggesting a difference between starts and proper beginnings, and
between closes and proper endings, I am introducing a distinction which has
some importance. The distinction, which is by no means original, may be
developed by considering some very simple observation.

1 A piece of talk which regularly is used to do some activityas Hello
is used to do greetingmay not invariably be so used, but may do
other activities as wellas Hello is used to check out whether
another with whom one is talking on the phone is still there or has
been cut offwhere it is in part its occurrence in the middle and not
the start of a conversation that serves to discriminate the use being
made of it.
2 Certain activities not only have regular places in some sequences where
they do get done but may, if their means of being done is not found
there, be said, by members, to not have occurred, to be absent. For
example, the absence of a greeting may be noticed, as the following
conversation, from field observation, indicates. The scene involved two
adult women, one the mother of two children, ages 6 and 10. The kids
enter and the following ensues:
Woman Hi.
Boy Hi.
Woman Hi, Annie.
Mother Annie, dont you hear someone say hello to you?
Woman Oh, thats okay, she smiled hello.
Mother You know youre supposed to greet someone, dont you?
Annie [Hangs head] Hello. [Note, however, that when children
are together in the absence of adults, they may omit
greetings and their omission may not be noticed by
other children.]
3 Certain activities can only be done at certain places in a sequence. For
example, a third strike can only be thrown by a pitcher after he has two
strikes on a batter.

Observations such as these lead to a distinction between a slot and the items
which fill it, and to proposing that certain activities are accomplished by a
combination of some item and some slot.
The notion of slot serves for the social scientist to mark a class of relevance
210
rules. Thus, if it can be said that for some assertable sequence there is a position
in which one or more activities properly occur, or occur if they are to get done,
then: The observability of either the occurrence or the nonoccurrence of those
activities may be claimed by reference to having looked to the position and
determined whether what occurs in it is a way of doing the activity.
An instance of the class of relevance rules might run: To see whether a
conversation included greetings, look to the first utterance of either party
and see whether there occurs in it any item which passes as a greeting; items
such as (hello, hi, hi there,). The fact that the list contains the ellipsis
might be deeply troublesome were it not the case that while we are unable to
list all the members of the class greeting items, we can say that the class is
bounded, and that there are some utterables which are not members of it,
perhaps, for example, the sentence now being completed. If that and only
that occurred in a first utterance, we might feel assured in saying that a
greeting did not occur.
Consider just one way that this class of relevance rules is important.
Roughly, it permits the social scientist to nontrivially assert that something is
absent. Nontrivial talk of an absence requires that some means be available for
showing both the relevance of occurrence of the activity that is proposedly
absent and the location where it should be looked for to see that it did not occur.
Lacking these, an indefinite set of other activities might equally well be asserted
to be absent given some occurrence, and the assertion in question not being
discriminable from the (other) members of that indefinite set, it is trivialized.
It does seem that for stories it is correct to say that they can have beginnings,
and we can then inspect the items that occur at their start to see whether they
can be seen to make a beginning. Given further that stories can have endings,
we can inspect the items that occur at their close to see whether they can be seen
to make an ending.
While my main interest will be with the storys start as a possible proper
beginning, let me briefly consider its close: She went to sleep. With this the
speaker would seem to be not merely closing but closing making a proper
ending. It so seems by virtue of the fact that such a sentence reports an
occurrence, or can be heard as reporting an occurrence, which is a proper
ending to something for which endings are relevant and standardized, that
very regularly used unit of orientation, the day. A day being recognized as
ending for some person when they go to sleep, so a story may be recognized
as closing with an ending if at its close there is a report of the protagonists
having gone to sleep. This particular sort of ending is, of course, not at all
particular to stories constructed by young children; it, and other endings
like it, from the last sleep death unto the shutting down of the world, are
regular components of far more sophisticated ventures in Western
literature.
[Although in what follows, Sacks interest in childrens talk with adults is
as an example of beginnings, the material he presents suggests fruitful lines
for further study of children by means of the approach he is developing. His
consideration of childrens restricted rights to talk, although scant, is
suggestive as a topic for sociological study. Detailed analysis of the talk of
children as young as the child described here is clearly possible, as is the
study of how othersboth children and adultshear the talk of children.]
211
Let me turn then to the start, to consider whether it can be said to be a
beginning. I shall attempt to show that starting to talk to adults is for small
children a rather special matter. I shall do that by focusing on a most
characteristic way that small children, of around the age of the teller of the
given story, characteristically open their talk to adults, i.e. the use of such items
as You know what? I shall offer an analysis of that mode of starting off, which
will characterize the problems such a start can be seen to operate as a
methodical solution to.
The promised analysis will warrant my assertion that starting to talk is,
for small children, a special matter. That having been established, I shall turn
to see whether the particular start we have for this story may be seen as
another type of solution to the same problem that I will have shown to be
relevant.
If I can then show that another solution is employed in our problematic
utterance (the sentence The baby cried), I will have shown that the story
starts with something that is properly a beginning, and that therefore, both
start and close are proper beginning and end. Such, in any event, are my
intentions.
I begin, roughly and only as an assumption (though naively, the matter is
obvious), by asserting that kids have restricted rights to talk. That being the
case, by assumption, I want to see whether the ways that they go about
starting to talk, with adults, can be most adequately seen to be solutions to
the problem which focuses on needing to have a good start if one is to get
further than that. Starts which have that character can then be called
beginnings.
Now, kids around the age of 3 go through a period when some of them have
an almost universal way of beginning any piece of talk they make to adults.
They use things like: You know what, Daddy? or You know something,
Mommy?
I will introduce a few rules of conversational sequencing. I do that without
presenting data now, but the facts are so obvious that you can check them out
easily for yourself; you know the rules anyway. The sequencing rules are for
two-party conversation; and, since two-party conversation is a special
phenomenon, what I say is not intended as applying for three- or more party
conversation.
One basic rule of two-party conversation concerns a pair of objects,
questions and answers. It runs: If one party asks a question, when the question
is complete, the other party properly speaks, and properly offers an answer to
the question and says no more than that. The rule will need considerable
explication, but for now, it will do as it stands.
A second rule, and its quite a fundamental one, because by reference to it
the, in principle, infinite character of a conversation can be seen as: A person
who has asked a question can talk again, has as we may put it, a reserved right
to talk again, after the one to whom he has addressed the question speaks. And,
in using the reserved right he can ask a question. I call this rule the chaining
rule, and in combination with the first rule it provides for the occurrence of an
indefinitely long conversation of the form Q-A-Q-A-Q-A-.
Now the characteristic opener that we are considering is a question (e.g.
You know what?). Having begun in that way, a user who did not have
212
restricted rights to talk would be in a position of generating an indefinite set of
further questions as each question was replied to, or as the other otherwise
spoke on the completion of some question.
But the question we begin with is a rather curious one in that it is one of
those fairly but not exceptionally rare questions which have as their answer
another question, in this case the proper and recurrent answer is What? The
use of initial questions of this sort has a variety of consequences. First, if a
question which has another question as its proper answer is used and is
properly replied to, i.e. is replied to with the proper question, then the chaining
rule is turned around, i.e. it is the initial answerer and not the initial questioner
who now has the reserved right to speak again after the other speaks. The initial
questioner has by his question either not assumed that he can use the chaining
rule or has chosen not to. (Note that we are not saying that he has not chosen to
invoke the chaining rule but rather that he has instead given the choice of
invoking it to the initial answerer. There are two different possibilities
involved.)
Second, the initial questioner does not only not make his second speech by
virtue of the chaining rule but he makes it by virtue of the first sequencing rule,
i.e. by reference to the fact that a person who has been asked a question
properly speaks and properly replies to it. His second speech is then not merely
not made as a matter of either the chaining rule or his choice by some other
means of making a second speech but it is something he makes by obligation,
given the fact that he has been asked a question and is therefore obliged to
answer.
Third, the question he is obliged to answer is, however, an open one in the
sense that what it is that an answer would be is something that its asker does
not know, and further is one that its answerer by the prior sequence should
know. What an answer is then to the second question is whatever it is the kid
takes to be an answer, and he is thereby provided with the opportunity to say
whatever it is he wanted to say in the first place, not now, however, on his own
say-so but as a matter of obligation.
In that case thenand the foregoing being a method whereby the production
of the question You know what? may be explicatedwe may take it that kids
take it that they have restricted rights which consist of a right to begin, to make
a first statement and not much more. Thereafter they proceed only if requested
to. And if that is their situation as they see it, they surely have evolved a nice
solution to it.
[For the most part Sacks has been focusing on what others, presumably
though not necessarily adults, hear in childrens utterances and not on what
children intend. In the above paragraph, however, he suggests the possibility
that children indeed do have the competence not only to use adult rules but to
use them in such a way that they, the children, can accomplish their own goals.
The subject of childrens talk thus becomes available as a topic for detailed
sociological research.]
With the foregoing we can say then that a focus on the way kids begin to talk
is appropriate, and we can see whether the beginnings of stories, if they are not
made of the culturally standardized beginnings (such as once upon a time),
might be seen to be beginnings by virtue of the special situation which kids have
vis--vis beginning to talk.
213
We may arrive at the status of The baby cried as a proper beginning, in
particular as a start that is a beginning by virtue of being a proper opener for
one who has restricted rights to talk, by proceeding in the following way. Let
us consider another solution to the problem of starting talk under restricted
rights. Ill begin by introducing a word, ticket. I can show you what I mean
to point to with the word by a hypothetical example. Suppose two adults are
co-present and lack rights to talk to each other, e.g. they have never been
introduced, or whatever. For any such two persons there are conditions under
which one can begin to talk to the other. And that those conditions are the
conditions used to in fact begin talk is something which can be shown via a
first piece of talk. Where that is done we will say that talk is begun with a
ticket. That is, the item used to begin talk is an item which, rights not
otherwise existing, serves to warrant one having begun to talk. For example,
one turns to the other and says, Your pants are on fire. It is not just any
opening, but an opening which tells why it is that one has breached the
correct silence, which warrants one having spoken. Tickets then are items
specially usable as first items in talk by one who has restricted rights to talk
to another. And the most prototypical class of tickets are announcements of
trouble relevant to the other.
Now it is clear enough (cf. the discussion of norms earlier) that the
occurrence of a baby crying is the occurrence of a piece of trouble relevant to
some person, e.g. the mother of the baby. One who hears it gains a right to
talk, i.e. to announce the fact that it has occurred, and can most efficiently
speak via a ticket, i.e. The baby cried. That being so, we can see then that the
opener The baby cried is a proper beginning, i.e. it is something which can
serve as a beginning for someone whose rights to talk are in the first instance
restricted.
With the foregoing we have established that the story we have been
examining has both a proper beginning and a proper end, and is thus not only a
story by virtue of being a possible description but also by virtue of its
employing, as parts, items which occur in positions that permit one to see that
the user may know that stories have such positions, and that there are certain
items which when used in them are satisfactory incumbents.
Notes
1 Consider, e.g. the following: These children are highly aware that they have
graduated from the rank of baby and are likely to exhibit considerable scorn of
babies, whether a neighbors child or a younger sibling. This feeling of superiority is
the residue of the parents praise for advance behaviour and their inciting the child
by remarks like only babies do that. Youre not a baby. The frequency of these
remarks at this age, however, suggest that in adult minds, at least, there is concern
lest the children lapse into babyish ways (Fischer and Fischer, 1963).
2 The following data is from a telephone call between a staff member (S) and a caller
(C) to an emergency psychiatric clinic. Note the juxtapositions of hair stylist in
item 4 with suspected homosexuality in the last item.
S: So, you cant watch television. Is there anything you can stay
interested in?
214
C: No, not really.
S: What interests did you have before?
C: I was a hair stylist at one time. I did some fashions now and then.
Things like that.
S: Then why arent you working?
C: Because I dont want to, I guess. Maybe thats why.
S: But you do find that you just cant get yourself going?
C: No. Well, as far as the job goes?
S: Yes.
C: Well, Ill tell you. Im afraid. Im afraid to go out and look for a job.
Thats what Im afraid of. But more, I think Im afraid of myself
because I dont know. Im just terribly mixed up.
S: You havent had any trouble with anyone close to you?
C: Close to me. Well, Ive been married three times and ImClose,
you mean, as far as arguments or something like that?
S: Yes.
C: No, nobody real close. Im just a very lonely person. I guess Im
very
S: Have you been having some sexual problems?
C: All my life.
S: Un huh. Yeah.
C: Naturally. You probably suspectas far as the hair stylist and
either go one one way or the other. There is a straight or
homosexual, something like that. Im telling you, my whole life is
just completely mixed up and turned over and its just smashed and
Im not kidding.

3 A late child was at times embarrassing to one woman who, while
enjoying him, found that in public places she often overheard people
saying, They must be his grandparents (Fischer and Fischer, 1963).
Concluding Note
Given the complexity of this article, a few additional comments may prove useful in
directing attention to the particular fruitfulness of Sacks ideas for the sociological
study of children. If the article is rereadan endeavor I recommendthen the
following considerations may serve to guide this second journey.
A major goal of this article is to demonstrate the many meanings embedded in
even the simplest of utterances. Sacks himself notes that the edifice (or apparatus,
as he also calls it) he constructs to understand the story he presents is indeed elaborate
for that task. The edifice, however, is so constructed that it can be used to examine
a multiplicity of other topics, some of which are suggested by Sacks. He offers many
intriguing ideas about childrens worlds in themselves and in relation to adult worlds.
Sacks illustrates, though he does not directly discuss, childrens competence
to construct descriptions, to create stories, to recognize adults expectations for
children, and to modify rules to meet both their own goals and adult
requirements. All these ideas emerge from the study of the utterance of child
who is not quite 3 years old. Certainly children may not intend all that adults
215
can hear or see, but for that matter adults may not intend all that can be
gleaned from adult words and acts. The point here is not intention but
formulation of words and deeds that are viewed as understandable and
meaningful. Some of what children say and do indeed does not make sense to
others; that some does suggests that even very young children are competent to
make sense in adult terms at least on some occasions. Adults may engage in
some interpretation of childrens activities but they do not make sense out of
non-sense; rather, they interpret behavior that already has at least some
meaning.
Another important idea to emerge from this article is that adults in fact do
interpret childrens activitieshear and see on the basis of adult taken-for-
granted rules about hearing and seeing. It is these rules, rather than pure
acts in themselves, that give sense to activities. Of particular signifi-cance here
is the idea that adults draw on norms about children in their interpretation of
childrens behavior; adults expect children to act like children; if they act like
adults they are seen as in some sense violating norms. Sacks might offer a
maxim of the sort: if you can see children as acting like children, then: see them
that way.
The implications of such a maxim for the sociological study of children are
profound, for such a rule embodies the adult bias criticized throughout this
book. Sociological study of children requires a suspension of this maxim if
childrens activities in all their variety and sophistication are to be recog nized.
Otherwise sociology is simply the articulation of common sense, hardly a
scientific undertaking.
Sacks also provides a basis for asking 1) do adults use their interpretation of
childrens utterances as a way of teaching children what their utterances ought
to mean? thus, 2) is adults understanding of childrens utterances an
epistemological (knowledge-related) undertaking or, rather, is it a political or
moral one? 3) are childrens interpretations of other childrens utterances
different from the interpretations made by adults?
Yet another idea about children that can be drawn from Sacks article is the
idea that children are able to distinguish between adults rules for them and
their own rules for one another and for adults. In this aspect children are like
foreignersthose who participate in two worlds, with all the juggling that
such duality entails. In a study of children playing tag (done as an assignment in
a course that used an earlier version of this book of readings) Lisa Cutrona
found in childrens talk about the game of tag that they 1) articulated special
rules for adults because bigger people can run faster and, more importantly, 2)
made such a rule while recognizing that adults pretend not to be able to run as
fast as they really can. The extent of childrens understanding of adult
concessions to them, and childrens concessions to adults, are fruitful topics for
further study. That such knowledge exists at all is significant and yet another
indication of childrens competence.
Sacks does not ask unexamined acceptance for all his claims; he urges
readers to consult their own experiences. As participants in social worlds, we
know how to do participation. Such knowledge is valuable data. If some of
Sacks claims seem questionable, test them in the world of everyday life, for that
is their source.
F.C.W.
216

Chapter 15

The Hard Times of Childhood and
Childrens Strategies for Dealing with
Them
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and some illustrative
findings from an ongoing study of The hard times of childhood and
childrens strategies for dealing with them. Let me make clear at the outset
that when I refer to the hard times of childhood, I do not refer to experiences
such as malnutrition and starvation, serious illness, deprivation, and the
horrors of child abuse. My concern is with identifying and examining some of
the ordinary, everyday difficulties of simply being a child in relation to
adults, other children, and the broader social worldexperiences that
children themselves at the time see as hard. Consider the following excerpt
from my data:

In my second year of preschool I had a few problems. I remember drawing
a picture of my family. When it came time to draw my father I couldnt
remember if a mustache was over or under the nose. I was too
embarrassed to ask anyone, so I think I put it over his nose. (Carol)

The kind of experiences I seek are not ones that adults would necessarily
characterize as hard for children. As one of my respondents noted:

The experiences that I have told all seem so trivial now, like it was
ridiculous to even have worried about them. But at the time they were so
real, so important to me. (Pam)

In the terms in which my informants describe their experiences they constitute a
serious challenge to the idealization of childhood as a time of unalloyed
innocence and joy.
The study on which I am reporting grows out of phenomenology (Husserl,
1913), symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1964, 1966, 1982), and
ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967). Of particular relevance is work in these
theoretical areas directed to the study of children as full-fledged social beings
217
The Hard Times of Childhood
(Mackay, 1973; Sacks, 1974; Goode and Waksler, 1989 and 1990; and papers
collected by Adler and Adler, Mandell, and Cahill in Sociological Studies of
Child Development, Volumes I through IV). The immediate sources of the study
are a theoretical piece I wrote entitled Studying children: Phenomenological
insights (1986 [Chapter 5]; see also Waksler, 1987 [Chapter 8]); a variety of
spirited discussions in college classrooms; and a surprisingly large number of
excellent student papers on the topic.
What is the sociological significance of establishing the social facticity of
the hard times of childhood? To establish that from their perspective children
do indeed have hard times expands our knowledge of the social world, but
this finding has further sociological significance. First, it serves to document
adults limited knowledge about children. This limited knowledge does not
seem to be accidental. Rather it is politically useful, for it enables adults to
act as they routinely do towards children, carrying out adult plans and
projects in which children are included, though not necessarily as willing
participants. Were adults regularly to take into account childrens
perspectives, they might continue to act as they would otherwise, but their
knowledge might well give lie to the presumed altruism of adults and willing
participation of children.
Second, the discovery of the hard times of childhood brings to light the social
contexts in which these hard times come about. Childrens difficulties emerge in
interaction, where children are misunderstood, both intentionally and
unintentionally, and where they lack power in relation to others, especially
adults. They may be expected to follow rules that they are not taught (see
Mackay, 1973 and Waksler, 1987) and have limited resources for changing or
bending rules.
Third, if we think of adults as teaching children how to become adults,
and if we recognize that children learn from what they see as well as what
they are told, then what do children learn from the kinds of experiences
described in this paper? In a story about fear written by Rose, she describes
her mothers statement, Dont worry. There is no such thing as a monster
not as a lesson that monsters dont exist; rather, in Roses words, I would
wonder to myself about how she could be so stupid. I knew they were there
and she didnt care. I cried myself to sleep for years. This was partly because
I was so terrified and partly because mommy didnt care. Unless Roses
mother was indeed trying to teach Rose that her mother didnt care, her
teaching methods both failed to teach what she intended and taught what she
didnt intend.
And lastly, the discovery of the hard times of childhood displays the many
similarities between children and adults, similarities that cannot be recognized
by sociologists who separate the study of children from the broader sociological
enterprise. Childrens hard times and those of adults are not after all so very
different in their basic characteristics.
Methodology
As a way of exploring this topic, I have solicited stories of childrens hard times.
I have begun not with children but primarily with college freshmena perhaps
218
exploited category of informants but for this particular study a very
knowledgeable one. I did not begin by studying children themselves for a
number of reasons, the major one being that the kinds of experiences in which I
am interested are those that children may well find politically unwise to disclose
to adults. Indeed, to my surprise, these experiences proved somewhat
problematic for college students to disclose to their own parents. Such
disclosures might be even more troublesome for young children and, until I can
more fully explore the political issues involved and responses that might be
made to them, I will forgo my study of young children directly.
The primary source of the data with which I am currently working is
papers that forty-four students
1
wrote in fulfillment of an assignment for a
freshman college course entitled Studying the Social Worlds of Children.
Students were asked to write a five-page first person account that focused on
memories of their own childhood, with particular emphasis on the difficulties
of being a child. They were to consider the questions: What was hard?
unfair? unable to be done? and to pay particular attention to the difficulties
presented by adults. Additional data comes from papers written for the
course the previous year, when I was less systematic about collecting data,
from class discussions, and from stories I continue to collect, both formally
and informally.
Students writing of this assignment followed a class discussion on the
topic. In initiating these discussions, I began by simply asking students to
reflect upon hard times of childhood, giving as an example being kissed by
adults when you didnt want to be. Classroom response has customarily
been knowing smiles followed by a flood of anecdotes. It is my impression
that my topic was not one about which students had already formulated
ideas, except of the quite different kind that adults routinely have about
childhood.
My initial concern was simply with identifying hard times; it soon
became clear, however, that equally significant were strategies for dealing
with these experiences. Unsolicited student reports of such strategies were
accompanied by a seeming certain pride expressed in describing the effective
use of such strategies. I therefore expanded my topic accordingly. In this
paper I focus on hard times but provide a note and some illustrative
examples of the kinds of strategies children may develop to offset, forestall,
and endure their hard times.
The stories included in this paper may appear to have been selected with a
bias towards those that provide a negative view of childhood. To the
contrary, the ones I have selected for inclusion are representative of the
stories I have collected. From the texts that I received from informants I have
deleted only some of the general commentary. I have also made some minor
editorial changes, mostly to correct grammar, give anonymity, and provide
clarification. Otherwise the data I present is in the words of the respondents.
A Note on Memories as a Source of Data
Events from their childhood routinely invoked in everyday life by adults seem
to be those that are memorably good or bad. When publicly presented as
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recollections, the good experiences tend to be very good; the bad, very bad. My
method of data gathering has been to ask respondents to select from their
memories according to different criteria, focusing on aspects of childhood that
in everyday adult life are seldom chosen for presentation.
Certainly it is naive to take memories as literal accounts of past events, and I
have no intention of so doing. Thus throughout this paper I refer to data I have
collected as stories, tales, and anecdotes. Whether or not the stories I have
heard and read are literally faithful to lived experience, they nonetheless display
a range of possible childrens feelings and actions that, to the best of my
knowledge, are not widely attended to or even suspected. To what extent
children do endure hard times awaits further empirical study but the data I have
gathered provides evidence for the social facticity of childrens hard times.
To know what children are experiencing, it is certainly necessary, as far as I
am concerned, to ask them at the time of the experiences. To know what to ask,
however, and to know what experiences might be occurring, seems to be aided
by the kinds of data I have gathered.
I am not claiming that childhood is a time of unmitigated hard times; I am
claiming that children, from their perspective, do endure hard times. I have not
been concerned with frequency but have simply gathered examples to
demonstrate that, contrary to everyday adult views, children, even the very
young, are capable of a wide range of thoughts, plans, tastes, moral views,
emotions, and, as well, actions directed to furthering their own goals, within
which framework they encounter hard times. (For further testimony to
childrens competence, see Mackay, 1973.)
I begin with a somewhat lengthy example that in its detail testifies eloquently
to the hard times of childhood.
A Prototypical Case of the Hard Times of Childhood:
The Swimming Lessons by Veronica
Do not bite your nails. Do not crack your knuckles. Do not slouch in your chair.
Do not spill your milk. Do not mash your peas. Do not wear through the knees
of your good pants. These are a few of the commands that I remember hearing
as a child. I also recall wondering if there was anything that I could do. In the
following paragraphs, I have recorded some of my childhood memories as I
recollect them.
My first and most vivid memory is of swimming lessons. I was 4 years old
at the time, It was a humid day in June and I was anxious to go to see Janet
and her pool. My mother parked the station wagon on the road and quicly
undid my seatbelt. As we started our journey up the path that was covered
with rocks and moss, I could smell chlorine in the air. My mother swung open
the gate and I was suddenly blinded by the reflection of the sun in the pool. I
readjusted my Minnie Mouse sunglasses to shield my eyes. The next thing I
220
remember is my mother leaving and Janet, the teacher, telling the seven of us
to grab one flutter board each and to get in the pool. The thought of getting in
the pool sent me into a panic. I sat there, glued to a plastic lounge chair. Janet
was talking to me sweetly and, at the same time, handing me a flutter board.
I felt that I was being singled out not only because it was a red flutter board
and I disliked that color but also because it was the only red flutter board. I
hated Janet at that moment.
After minutes of debating over how I could escape, I finally gave in and
took the horrid piece of red plastic. I walked to the steps of the pool and
stood there. The rest of my peers were in the water waiting for me. I felt that
they were staring at me and my stomach that was protruding from my
orange and yellow checked bikini. Janet sauntered into the pool and glanced
back over her shoulder at me. I dipped a toe in the pool and suddenly
realized why the rest of the children looked slightly blue. I cleared my throat
and asked, Can your turn up the heater in there? She laughed and told me
that there was no heater in the pool. I had never heard of a pool without a
heater. The instructor kept urging me to get in the water and it looked to me
as if the class was getting a bit restless too. I put my left foot on the first step
and quickly pulled it out. Its too cold. I just cant do it, I said, as I felt tears
coming to my eyes. Janet told me to sit on the edge of the pool for a while
until I was used to it. I remember thinking that maybe she was not as bad as
I had thought.
Some time passed and I was completely content sitting there with my feet
dangling in the water. Then Janet told me that it was time to get in. The water
is still too cold, I told her. She did not look as though she believed me. I feel like
an ice cube, I explained. I sat on the steps of the pool for the rest of the lesson.
The only good part of the whole hour was when we got to have cookies and
juice.
The next week I had to sit on the steps in the pool, so I at least got wet up
to my shoulders. After the lesson, I got cookies and juice again. The week
after that, Janet told me that I had to participate. My worst fear was
happening. I tried to get out of it by sitting on the steps but it did not work.
It appeared to me that she was that mean lady I had thought she was that
first day we met. She made me put my face in the water and blow bubbles, a
task that I found totally pointless. After I had accomplished that, I was
allowed to get out of the pool. I say on a lounge chair, wrapped in a towel.
My mother arrived early that day to pick me up. She was full of questions as
to why I was not in the pool like all the other children. When I would not
supply the answers that she wanted, she went and talked to Janet. I
remember them standing there talking about me while I was sitting right
there. What an awful, humiliating feeling that was. Janet said that if I did not
participate in the whole exercise the next week, my mother should consider
removing me from the class. On the way home in the car, I burst into tears
and sobbed about what a mean person the instructor was and about how I
never wanted to go back. My mother ended my tantrum with a short, You
must learn to swim.
On the day of my fourth lesson, I tried every illness that I could think of.
My mother did not believe me. The path that had seemed so pretty the first
day now seemed long, slippery and windy. The smell of the chlorine was
221
making me sick. My mother pushed me inside the gate and left. I was left
alone to face Janet and the pool. I had been deserted. The lesson started and
I was told, not asked, to get in the pool. It felt colder that day than any other
day before it. I remember thinking that I would get everyone back for making
me do this. After I was submerged in water up to my shoulders, Janet pulled
me across the pool to the side opposite the steps. I was left with no escape
route. I clung to the side of the pool for the entire hour. I thought that my
fingers would never uncurl again. That awful, horrible woman had left me
there, clinging to the side of the pool. I recall thinking that no one would ever
come and rescue me. I would die grasping on to the concrete. I did not dare
let go because I thought that I might sink. I could not even use my evil red
flutter board to float on because when Janet had dragged me across the pool,
it had been left over near the steps. Finally, my mother came over and pulled
me out. I thought it was, by far, the least she could do. I swore that I would
never go near that pool again.
Moreover, I managed to get out of the next two lessons. This seemed perfect
at the time but it was not until my seventh class that I realized I was in trouble.
They were diving and I was expected to do the same. I cried and cried but it
appeared that nothing was going to work. I announced that the water was too
cold but Janet told me that it was not. She finally agreed to letting me sit on the
side of the pool. I thought that I was safe for another hour until I comprehended
what she was doing. She had the entire class sit on the edge of the pool next to
me and do sitting dives into the water. One by one my classmates dove into the
pool until it was my turn. I sat there shaking. I tried to retreat to a lounge chair
but Janet caught me. She made me point my hands above my head while she
pushed me into the pool. I had not taken a breath until I was under the water. I
became disoriented and began paddling towards the bottom of the pool. That
was when she ended up dragging me out of the coldness. I cried hysterically
until my mother arrived. My mother sided with Janet and left me to tell my
story to my dog.
When it was the day of our last meeting, I did not put up such a fight to
go. It was family day which meant that my mother would be there the whole
time while we dove for pennies. We also got to eat more cookies than usual.
Janet had promised me that she would put my pennies on the steps. I found
this only reasonable since she had tried to drown me the week before. She
threw nine pennies on the first and second steps and one on the third. I
quickly stooped down and picked up the first nine pennies and handed them
to my mother. I looked at the tenth penny gleaming on the third step. I
wanted that penny so badly. I thought that Janet had put it down there
because she thought that I would have to go under to get it. I shimmied up
next to the penny and looked at it. I made it look like I was pondering over
it. I tried to reach it a few times with my hands. I looked up at everyone who
was watching me and smiled. I took a deep breath and grasped the penny
with my toes. I dropped it in my hand and then climbed out of the pool. I
was so proud of myself.
What constitute the hard times of childhood? My data indicates that
childrens lack of control over many and important aspects of their lives serves
as the grounds of their hard times. One respondent, Holly, for example, speaks
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of all the numerous times adults made my decisions for me. I have been able to
categorize my data into stories chronicling lack of control over the physical
world, the world of emotions, and the moral world. In what follows I suggest
the nature of these different kinds of hard times.
Lack of Control Over the Physical World
Childrens lack of control in the physical sphere is evident in stories where
children are denied control of:

a. their bodies, such that others deal with their bodies against their will or
without their permission
b. of the activities in which they engage, i.e. others determine where
they go, how they conduct themselves, what they do, and what they
cannot do
c. appearance, and thus their presentation of self
d. relations with others, including friends and enemies
e. additionally, children may be frustrated by inabilities or inadequacies,
much as adults may be, but may also lack control over resources to
cope with, minimize, or change their deficits

The lack of control over the physical world described by informants indicates a
wide range of areas of limitation. The sources of these limitations include adults
(especially parents), other children, and the childs own physical abilities.
Adults may well argue that adult limitations are necessary in order to protect
children physically, to guarantee their health, and to turn them into responsible
adults, but adults may not realize that the costs of implementing such goals may
be very high. Two obvious questions to ask are: Are the costs too high, given the
goals? and, Could the costs be reduced? A more fundamental issue, however,
arises by questioning adult claims, routinely taken for granted, that such
limitations placed on children indeed do accomplish what they claim to and
that taking childrens views into account more fully would impede the
accomplishment of those goals.
a. Bodies Consider the following two stories:
Naps
Nap time was an adult imposed rule that I found especially hard to
do. When I was 3 I was forced to take a nap during the day. Being a
very active child, I could never sleep at nap time. It was so hard to lie
still on my mat when I had so much energy inside of me. The toys
around me always seemed to be calling my name to come over and
play, and consequently I had the reputation of being a hard-to-
control napper. My mother even used to make me take naps on
Christmas day after dinner, but before we opened our presents from
Grandma and Grandpa. I remember thinking How do they expect
me to sleep with all of these unopened presents? (Irene)
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A Tale of Food
We always had to finish everything on our plates. If we did not finish
we were sent to our rooms for the night. My mother always used to
make tuna fish casserole. All of us kids hated it. It was always such
a hassle when it was made. My brother John was always sent to his
room. Everyone, even adults, have foods that they do not enjoy the
taste of. It just did not seem fair that we had to finish everything on
the plate. (Inez)

With respect to lack of control in the physical sphere, why indeed do adults
bathe children, put them to bed and send them for naps, feed them according to
adult standards set for children, control their access to bathroom facilities, and
so on? Running through the stories I have collected are tales of adult
convenience, taste, and standards. Adults differ from one another in the
standards they set for themselves; children, on the other hand, seem to be held
to whatever standards are set by those who care for them. How frequent must
bathing be to produce cleanliness? How clean is clean enough? Who decides?
Do adults put children to bed because children need their sleep or because
adults need time without children? That children can, through a variety of
strategies, not get the amount of sleep they are said to need and still function
suggests that their need for specific amounts of sleep may be more an adult
than a biological need. That adults fail to observe childrens strategies for
avoiding sleepstrategies that nonetheless keep children as quiet as if they
were asleepsuggests either that adults are not particularly vigilant or that it is
in their interest to have children act as if they were asleep rather than
necessarily being asleep.
b. Activities Childrens lack of control over their activities are clearly
exemplified in the following pair of stories:

Too Many Lessons
The year I was 10 I might as well have had a job because I was
always being driven to some other activity. Didnt my parents know
kids just like to sit around and do nothing some of the time? On
Mondays it was gymnastics lessons, on Tuesdays it was guitar
lessons, Wednesdays were swim day, Thursdays were Girl Scouts,
Friday was art class, and Saturday mornings I played basketball. All
I wanted to do was play the piano. I dont want to do all these
things, I am not a superkid, I am just a kid who wants to play the
piano. (Mary)

Lessons Denied
When I was 12 years old, I wanted to sign up for cheerleading, but
my parents said they did not have the extra money. They did have
the money to sign my brother, Tom, up for football, though. I
wanted to take flute lessons. My mother said What do you want to
do that for? Tom later took drum lessons and Phil now takes guitar
and piano. My father did find the money to sign me up, without my
consent, for basketball and soccer. Sports were important to him. I
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wasnt aggressive, hated competition. He would say If youd only
try harder. You have the potential. I tried to tell him how much I
hated sports, especially when I was the only girl on the team. He just
didnt listen. (Linda)

c. Appearance Adults routinely take clothing, hair style and length, and a
host of other appearance-related phenomena to be important aspects of their
own presentation of self, over which they maintain considerable control.
Children may share this sense of importance without so routinely being able
to exert significant control. One issue here may be that the appearance of a
child may have implications for how others will view the adult with that
child. Since at least some of the work involved in the childs appearance
may devolve upon an adult, issues of time, cost, etc. also may affect the
adults decisions.
Clothing and hairstyle can clearly have important implications for a childs
journeys into the world outside home. Informal surveying of informants
indicates that those who had long hair wanted short, those with short, long,
those with curly hair wanted straight, etc. Childrens concern may be with
appearance and adults with care as well, though children may also weigh the
bother involved and adults may be particularly concerned with appearance.
The key issue here, however, is childrens experiences of not looking the way
they want to and being troubled by it, both for reasons of aesthetics and for its
implications in presenting ones self to others.

The Problem of Short Hair
I always wanted to have long, straight hair like most of my friends
did. However, my mother insisted on keeping my hair short, because
she said it would be too much trouble to take care of. I also wanted
to have my hair straightened, but my mother laughed every time I
mentioned this suggestion. At the time, I was very frustrated by the
situation. Not only did I want to be like my friends, but several times
people who didnt know me referred to me as a boy. When I was at
home, I would take a pink blanket that I used for my dolls, and tie it
around my head, so I could pretend I had long hair. I also used to
take my mothers old wigs that were stored in the attic and wear
them when I was in the house. (Sally)

Why are adults concerned about the appearance of their children in such a
way that they override childrens notions of appearance? Why would one
deny children permission to have their ears pierced or to wear clothes of a
particular kind? Perhaps adults dont want to be seen as the kind of person
who would allow a child to look like that, but such concerns seem to be
for the benefit of adults, not children. Throughout these stories are many
claims about adult preferences and making things easier for adultsnot
negligible claims but nonetheless less for the good of the child than for the
good of the adult.
d. Relations with others Relations with otherssiblings, friends, enemies
emerge as an issue over which children lack control. Stories tell of being
225
separated from siblings and friends and of being teamed up with undesired
others. Complaints about adult choreography of childrens relationships are
described as having been routinely dismissed as illegitimate by adults.
A consideration of childrens relationships with others displays clearly adult
concerns for their own well-being. Childrens concerns about relationships can
routinely be superseded by adults concerns with those relationships or with
other issues. Thus siblings and friends can be separated for their own good and
children can be forced into associating with others for adults own good.

Separation from Siblings
When my sister Pat and I were younger we did everything
together from sharing a crib, clothes and toys to making
diagrams on the walls with toothpaste, cakes on the floor of the
kitchen, and writing with markers on our parents bedspread.
We were like twins. We were only a year and three days apart
and we were inseparable. But when it was time for nursery
school, we were not allowed to go together. My mom wanted me
to experience school alone and be recognized as an individual
being. She wanted me to have friends and not have to be home
all day with just Pat and her. I thought she was so unfair to send
me to school without Pat. How could she think I would be able
to survive without her? I didnt want to go to school. I was
scared of being alone and having no friends. I cried all the way
to school every day for two weeks, but once I got there I was
fine. Pat, on the other hand, resented the fact that I was leaving
her to go to school and have fun. It was very hard on me
because I wanted her to be there too and she was, the next year.
We spent a year of nursery school together because I was too
young to go into kindergarten. So for a year we got our own
way and spent every day together in school and made our
parents lives a living hell with our schemes. (Diane)

Childrens likes and dislikes may be routinely overridden, perhaps because they
go unrecognized. The following tale describes a situation where the adults
reasoning may seem quite understandable, but it becomes less so in the face of
the degradation described.

Forced Association with Children
My earliest memory of myself is when I was 5 years old. The year
was 1974. I was 5 and my brother was 3. My mother was into a diet
mode, a mode that made her want to lose weight and exercise, so
she enrolled herself into the Gloria Stevens program. This program
would allow her to work out with a class and an instructor. The
place was fully equipped with rowing machines, exercise bikes,
exercise mats, and weights. That was only part of the reason she
enrolled. The other part was that she could bring us and put us in a
playroom. This is where I had a problem. I dreaded the day each
week when my mom would put us in the car and we would head to
Gloria Stevens. The playroom was about the size of a bathroom.
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The doorway was blocked with one of those gates that are used to
prevent a baby from crawling down stairs. I was furious to be
confined to such an area where most of the kids were younger than
I was and the toys were geared for toddlers. There I was, confined
to a room where I was unable to get out because the gate was too
high for me to get my leg over. I never threw a temper tantrum
because I knew that would aggravate my mom. So I would just
stand by the gate waiting for the hour to go by. I would be in a bad
mood the whole time I was there. It was no fun for me. I was too
old to be in that small room with toddlers! All I wanted was to be
on the other side of the gate but because I was a child I was
confined.
I saw that I was different from the toddlers and could
distinguish between the labels. I saw that I was not a toddler because
I wasnt in diapers and I didnt talk in broken sentences. I knew that
5-year-olds dont throw temper tantrums to get something or at
least it didnt work in my house with my parents. (Judy)

Being put into situations with those one would rather avoid is captured again in
the following tale:

Forced Association with Relatives
Ever since I can remember, my family has been trying to put me and
my cousin Jake together. My family would take pictures of us
holding hands or him kissing me on the cheek. Every time this
occurred I felt like I was going to be sick. I could not stand Jake and
always refused to go to visit him.
One particular incident occurred when I was about 6 or 7 years
old. My grandmother and grandfather were taking me to visit the
cousins, including Jake. I begged and pleaded to stay home, but they
would not listen to me. I even told them that I hated Jake and that he
was always trying to touch and kiss me. They just laughed and said,
Isnt that cute. I felt frustrated because nobody would pay
attention to my feelings.
When we arrived at my cousins, I sat very close to my
grandmother. I was hoping I would not be bothered. But, sure
enough, Jake came over to me and I was forced to play with him. I
was so angry and upset at this point that I threw a temper tantrum
and we left.
I am usually a very quiet, well behaved child, so for me to resort
to a temper tantrum must have been the ultimate. But it worked. I
have not seen my cousin Jake since this incident. (Ellie)

e. Inabilities and inadequacies Regarding the limits of ones physical being,
informants spoke of being unable to do things because of size or abilities. Being
too young was not cited by informants as in itself a physical problem but
rather as a claim used by others as a rationale for restricting children, as in the
following:
227
Being Too Young
One of my sisters was nine years older that I was, and my other was
thirteen years older than I was. The age difference was so great that
I was always too young to do something or go somewhere. I can
remember my sisters going out at the same time that I was supposed
to go to bed. I always wanted to go with them to a basketball game
or to a movie, and it was always past my bedtime, and I was too
young. (Irene)

Some sources of frustration for children may be irremediable. Whoopie
Goldbergs comic skit on a black child wanting long blonde hair is one such
instance. Interestingly, white informants have spoken of using the same
pretense Goldberg describesputting a shirt on ones head as a facsimile of
long hair (see above, p. 224).
The following two tales speak of other irremediable
characteristics.

Freckles
Not everything was my parents fault. I had frecklesand lots of
them. Other children teased me and called me freckle-face. Younger
children asked me what was wrong with my face and why it was
dirty. My mother told me they were a sign of beauty. They did not
look beautiful to me. (Linda)

Although adults and children may experience a similar lack of control over the
physical world, they also may have access to different resources. Thus children
might remedy short hair or the wrong color hair by wearing shirts on their
heads; adults might simply let their hair grow or dye it. Adults may disguise
freckles with makeup, an option not routinely available to children.

Physical Size
Physical differences were a big part of the pain childhood at times
gave me. I was always very tiny and small. I was several inches
shorter than my peers and it made me feel very self-conscious. This
was especially true in my pre-school and elementary years. I
remember everyone saying I was so cute. That wasnt the bad part,
however. What hurt the most was when people would think I was
younger than I actually was because of my short height. Two
examples come to mind:
The first example relates directly to Mary Joyces article,
Watching People Watching Babies [see Chapter 9]. Even when I was 6
and 7 years old, adults would crouch down to my level and treat me
as if I were years younger. The Look Joyce talks about was usually
absent, but her findings on how adults talk to babies was certainly
present. Relatives that I had not seen in years would pinch my cheeks
and say Look at Yooooou! Arent yooooou a cuteeeeee! (Gini)

Clearly children can be said to lack control in many aspects of the physical
world. To note this lack is certainly not to recommend that children be given
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everything they want. It does, however, suggest that what children want, what
adults think children want, what adults want children to want, what adults
want, etc. are very different from one another. These distinctions become
readily blurred when one speaks in terms of childrens needs and when one
defines all adult behavior towards children as altruistically motivated. One way
to read the foregoing stories and the ones to follow is to look for instances
where it appears to be to adults advantage to not notice that children are
perceiving their experiences as hard times and where adult decisions seem to be
motivated at least in part by adults own welfare, even when they may claim
otherwise.
A Caveat
I want to emphasize that I am not attributing the hard times described herein to
bad parents or other bad adults. Indeed, as one of the respondents noted:

As I reread my paper it occurred to me that I did not make my parents
look very good. I realize that this was part of the assignment but I feel that
it would be wrong if I left a bad impression on anyone about my parents.
I must give them credit for being such good parents because if they had
not been I would not have had so much trouble trying to think of things to
write about for this paper. (Gina)

Trouble or not, this respondent was nonetheless able to recount experiences in
no way significantly different from those of others. My data includes other such
disclaimers. An important finding that emerges from my data is the very fact
that these kinds of childrens experiences can occur with what might even be
viewed as ideal parents; the experiences seem to be an outcome of simply
being a child.
Lack of Control Over the World of Emotions
In examining claims made by informants about emotions experienced in
childhood, it appears that children may experience a wide range of emotions of
which adults may not think them capable. My data includes descriptions of
embarrassment, anger, vindictiveness, fear, and feelings of inadequacy.
One might speak of adults possessing taken-for-granted rules for childrens
feelingsrules that children themselves may neither follow nor indeed
recognize. Adult rules may encompass both the emotions that children can and
cannot feel and the objects towards which they can feel them.

Inadequacy
I was one of those children that dreaded gym class because I was so
clumsy and uncoordinated. I remember fearing the time that it
would be my turn in kickball or volleyball because I was never any
good at sports and I was afraid that everybody would laugh at me. I
tried everything but I wasnt much of an athlete. It wasnt that I was
discriminated against by my teachers because I was clumsy; it was
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more like I was discriminated against by the other kids. After all, if
all I can remember about gym class when I was in elementary school
was being picked next to last for kickball, then the kids must not
have liked my athletic ability too much. (Pam)

In his article Embarrassment and Social Organization (1967), Goffman offers
insights that seem applicable to children, even though he refers entirely to adult
situations, in line with what he sees as the non-person status of children in
everyday life. Consider this tale of embarrassment:

Embarrassment: Behavior of adults in public
Once, at an amusement park, my parents got into a huge fight. We
were sitting in the parking lot of the park when they started to fight.
My father didnt want to stay because he hates amusement parks.
My mother said Fine, lets go! Then she asked how he could do
that to us (take us to an amusement park and not let us go on the
rides). My mother got out of the car, took my sisters hand and
started walking into the park. My father was walking about a block
behind, and I was in between the two of them, crying hysterically. It
was so embarrassing, because all of the people were watching me
cry and telling each other to look at me and saying how sorry they
felt for me. Some of the people even wanted to help me. I was so
humiliated. I hated my mother for doing this to me. (Sara)

Children may respond to objects and events with emotions that adults deem
inappropriate. Thus, for example, in the stories I collected about divorce,
divorce itself did not emerge as a hard time from the childrens point of view as
respondents described it, despite the fact that adults routinely so characterize it
both for themselves and for children.

Divorce
The strongest memory I have is one involving my parents divorce.
When I was really young, I didnt pay much attention to the fact that
I didnt have my father around. Nobody made a big deal about it. I
wasnt sad, I didnt feel as though I was missing out, and I felt
content. As I got older and started school, however, all that changed.
All right, class, today we are going to make Fathers Day
cards, my first grade teacher announced. I felt my stomach tighten
and silently I raised my hand.
Mrs. Fields, I I dont have a father who lives with me.
Oh! Oh, you poor child. Well, I guess you can just draw a
picture then, she told me. I nodded, but I was shaking inside. Was I
different? Did I fit in anymore? Why didnt the other kids just draw
pictures? Why couldnt I have a father too. These were only a few of
the feelings and questions I had.
Tammy, Im so, so sorry that your dad isnt living with you.
That must be awfully hard for you to deal with. After these words
were spoken to me, I wanted to tell the adult that it was no big deal.
It really didnt affect me. After hearing the two comments just
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mentioned, I began to think more about not how I really felt but
rather how everyone else thought I should feel. I started missing a
man I didnt even know, I started to cry about not having a dad, and
I also developed feelings of jealousy. I hated hearing about what my
friends did with their fathers because it made me feel empty and sad.
(Tammy)

Clearly neither adults nor children possess limitless control over the world of
emotions, but adults seem to be able to help one another out in ways that they
may not routinely employ in their interactions with children. Adults power
over children enables them to overlook childrens feelings without such
consequences as destruction of the social encounter that would be likely in
adult-adult interactions.
Lack of Control Over the Moral World
A number of aspects of truth emerged in my data as moral concerns: telling the
truth and lying; discrepancies between what adults said and what they did;
believing that adults routinely spoke the truth; learning, perhaps with dismay or
disappointment, that adults do lie, both to others in general and to oneself (the
child) in particular; and the difficulties in having ones word as a child taken as
truth, especially if it conflicts with the claims of an adult or if it conflicts with
reason (i.e. as defined by adults). Not being believed was identified as an instance
of hard times and the stories describing the experience make clear the particular
frustration one can feel as a child at having ones word questioned or rejected.

Not Being Believed
When I was 5 years old my sister and I were playing in the sandbox
and my sister poured sand all over her head and told my
grandmother that I did it and I got in trouble and I didnt do it and
she did it again and each time I got in worse trouble. When I told my
grandmother that I didnt do it, she said that my sister wouldnt
pour sand on her own hair on purpose. I felt so powerlessI
couldnt prove I was right. So I had to take the punishment and my
sister kept on playing in the sand and laughed at me because I
couldnt play. (Anonymous notes from class discussion)

The following story deals with deception, demonstrating how adults practical
concerns may be at odds with childrens sense of morality, as well as with their
presentation of self.

Passing as Younger
Once a year my family and I would go on a vacation. Ever since I
remember (approximately 4 or 5 years of age) up until the present we
have gone away. We went to places like Florida, California, Canada,
Mexico, Washington D.C., and more. We would plan (my brother
and I) where we wanted to go one year in advance. We had so much
fun on these trips. I did, however, encounter some difficulties.
One difficulty which I would get steamed about had to do with
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the age situation. Every time we went on a vacation, my dad would
pass me off for a younger age to get the cheaper rates. I remember
his saying two adults, one junior, and one child. My brother at the
time was 12 and I was 9. Child, however, was anybody under 8. I
always wanted to yell out my real age because I wanted to be myself,
not a little kid.(Fern)
Excursus: Youll understand when you grow up or Looking
back, I can see that my parents were right
One way that adults, looking back on their childhoods, seem to resolve the
contradiction between their feelings at the time and their view of their parents
as basically honorable is by adopting an adult point of view on childhood
experiencesthat childhood experiences that seemed difficult at the time were
really trivial and that adults routinely acted on the basis of childrens best
interests, even if as children such did not seem to be the case.
In class discussions about the hard times of childhood, participants regularly
end stories with a tag line of the Looking back, I can see that my parents were
right variety. What strikes me as noteworthy is that when I ask that such an
idea be seriously evaluated rather than automatically appended, it seems to
disappear. The tag displays the quality of a self-evident view that any ordinary
adult is expected to hold. The ready disappearance of the tag suggests that its
use is based more on custom that on commitment to its message.
The uncritical adoption of the views that childrens experiences can be
judged trivial and that adults actions can be judged altruistic, especially in the
face of memories to the contrary, suggests that such adult views are socially
useful to adults. One such use is to make sense of ones experiences as a child
in ways that do not challenge adults. Another use is to enable adults to continue
their ways of acting with children. And thus the change in practices that might
result from adults remembering and taking seriously their childhood
experiences is weakened or destroyed.
After a lengthy and somewhat outraged description of adults telling lies to
children in order to get them to behave, one anonymous respondent concluded
with the statement, It is funny, because I now find myself telling my 8 year old
sister or any child the same stories. In order to use with children the techniques
one learned from adults when one was a child, it is necessary to set aside ones
childhood memories of those experiences as bad. To be able to say Now that
Im an adult, I can understand enables one to use the techniques with which
one is familiar and, at the same time, establish oneself as a member of the
category adult and no longer of the inferior category of child.
A Note on Strategies for Dealing with The Hard Times of
Childhood
Embarking on this study I never considered the idea that children might develop
systematic strategies to cope with what they perceived as hard times. My
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informants, however, provided abundant examples of myriad methods for
exerting some degree of control over their circumstances. I have begun
analyzing this data by using categories comparable to those used to examine
childrens lack of control, demonstrating how children can exert control over
physical, emotional, and moral worlds to further their own ends. Here I simply
introduce a bit of the data to give a sense of its character.
Control Over the Physical World: Faking Illness
Faking illness, especially as a way of avoiding going to school, emerged as a
workable method for gaining control. The following story demonstrates
particular care, attention to detail, and complexity in working out a suitable
method for achieving a goal.

Faking Illness
The relevant background features to this incident are: 1) It was a
weekday night and I did not want to go to school the next day. 2)
My mother, a nurse, was working at a nearby hospital from 3:00
p.m. until 11:00 p.m. 3) I had discovered previously (in the process
of trying to create Orangeade) that if I mixed Coca-Cola and orange
juice, a peculiar substance emerged. It looked a lot like vomit.
After my mother left for work, I climbed up on the counter and
found one of the big coffee mugs that my father used only on Sundays.
He would not be looking for it until then, which left me plenty of time
to wash it and get it back up there. I then made my creation out of Coca-
Cola and orange juice. I carried the cup up to my room and hid it in the
drawer next to my bed. That night, I purposely drank orange juice with
dinner. An hour later, I complained to my sister that I felt sick. I did not
tell my father because I thought that he would tell me to go to bed and
then he would check on me. I also thought that he was really smart and
might figure out my plan. I went to bed at my usual time but I did not
go to sleep. I watched my clock. At 11:05 p.m., I got up and went to the
bathroom. I rinsed my mouth out with warm water for about ten
minutes. When I heard the garage door go up, I took out the mug. I
poured the vomit-look-alike on the floor next to my bed. I put the mug
in the drawer and pushed it way in the back. When I heard my mother
coming up the basement stairs, I began to whine and call to her. She came
upstairs and saw the mess. She asked me what I had eaten and I made a
point to tell her that I had orange juice with dinner. Then she took my
temperature. It was up a bit. She cleaned up the mess and told me not to
worry about getting up in the morning. My plan had worked. (Veronica)
Control Over the World of Emotions: Temper Tantrums
Some of my data suggests that temper tantrums were viewed as hard times,
events over which children felt they had little control. Other data suggests that
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children could use temper tantrums intentionally, manipulating their emotions
as a method for achieving their ends. Although the following story documents
failure rather than success, nonetheless it displays a temper tantrum as a
strategy for dealing with hard times.

Talking about temper tantrums is a very easy topic for me. As a child
they happened all of the time.
I remember one tantrum in particular. My mother, my sister,
and I were on our way to watch the fireworks show in my town on
the fourth of July. I was around 3 years old at the time. I was getting
tired of walking so I wanted my mother to carry me. I kept
bothering her to pick me up, but she refused to do so. I began to cry
and jump up and down but she still kept walking. I stopped where I
was and held my breath until I turned blue and passed out. Of
course after falling face first into the dirt I became conscious again
but my mother would still not pick me up. I was furious! (Dawn)
Control Over the Moral World: Lying and Subterfuge
Despite childrens expressed distress at lying and subterfuge, they appear to be
capable of using such strategies to their own benefit.

Subterfuge for Disliked Clothing
I had a blue polyester, zip-up-the-front outfit. It was short sleeved
without a collar, attached to shorts, and on the front pocket was a sea
horse. I wouldve loved to have burnt it, but instead I would always try
to lose it. My mom would always manage to find it. It was easy for
her to dress me in and she thought it looked cuteYUCK! I eventually
learned to rip the clothes I didnt like because my mom didnt sew so
they would end up in the mending hamper for years. (Holly)

Subterfuge for Avoiding Disliked Food
At the age of maybe 5 or 6, I started to overcome this difficulty of
dinnertime. The rules remained the same but the end solution
changed a little. I would still sit there until the meal got cold but
when it came to three big mouthfuls I got a little smart. I would take
the three mouthfuls and excuse myself from the table. I would then
go into the bathroom and spit those three mouthfuls into the toilet.
I dont think my mother ever knew, mainly because I used to wiggle
around while giving my dog the rest of my dinner. This added to the
idea that I had to go to the bathroom.
That was dinner, the same thing every night. (Fern)
The Special Resource of Being Cute
One resource that children can learn to employ at a very young age is their
cuteness.
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As a small child, I knew how to get adults to approve of me. It was
quite simplebe cute, do what youre told, and dont question
authority. My third grade teacher was a firm believer in my theory
and she loved me! If that old woman only knew how I felt about her,
it would break her mean heart. (Amy)
You cant be mad at me. Im too cute, (anonymous 3-year-old)
2

Exactly how children learn this strategy and the specifics of how they go about
employing it is an intriguing topic for future research.
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper has been to provide an overview and illustrative
findings from a study of The hard times of childhood and childrens strategies
for dealing with them. Whether or not the stories I have heard and read
accurately rerlect actual lived experiences, they nonetheless display a wide
range of possible childrens feelings and actions that are not regularly
investigated, taken into account, or even identified in the sociological literature.
Certainly the relation between memories and literal accounts of past events
is problematic. To what extent children do endure hard times awaits further
empirical study. Findings of the sort described in this paper should, however,
facilitate such study. I do want to caution researchers that disclosures of hard
times may be problematic for those who disclose them and may involve
political issues and serious adult responses, even retaliation.
The discovery of the hard times of childhood brings forward for attention
knowledge that is obscured when sociologists separate the study of children
from the broader sociological enterprise. I have gathered abundant examples of
hard times and, serendipitously, of myriad methods children might use to exert
some degree of control over physical, emotional, and moral worlds. The data I
have gathered displays children as far more than mere objects in the social
world of adults; they emerge as full-fledged social actors in their own right,
possessed of a range of pleasures and pains, knowledge and strategies.
A shorter paper, drawn from these materials was presented at the meetings of
the Eastern Sociological Society, Boston, MA, March 1990.
Notes
1 Most of those from whom I have collected data are female. The small number of
male respondents have not provided data that differs in any significant way and
males who have read versions of this paper have offered not objections but rather
examples of the same sort, drawn from their own experiences. Certainly the
inclusion of more males is a necessary next research step but it is my suspicion that
their inclusion will not significantly alter the findings.
2 Example provided by Erica Cavin.
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Conclusion
In the early days of sociology (and of anthropology as well), it was common to
view tribal groups (in Africa, Australia, and South America and, in the US, Native
Americans) as primitive and child-like. Comparisons of and analogies between
children and primitives were common. Nowadays it is recognized that such
comparisons minimize the complexity of tribal life. Although tribal social
arrangements indeed differ from those of modern-day Western societies, both
involve assumptions, beliefs, knowledge, science, and practical action as those are
defined by participants. Differences can be recognized without necessitating a
judgment that one way is in any absolute sense better or truer than another.
Just as it has turned out that tribal societies are not child-like, it may be that
children themselves are not either. Rather, the idea may be an adult stereotype of
children, a stereotype that facilitates adult control and an adult assumption of
superiority. In many respects the children encountered in the foregoing pages have
not been child-like but, rather, competent actors in the social world, creating and
transmitting lore (Opies); telling stories (Sacks); displaying aesthetic concerns and
creating art (Cavin); even participating in drug-taking (Adlers); encountering hard
times and developing ways of dealing with them (Waksler); and possessing a
variety of ways of being in the world (Mandell, Goode). Indeed, when children
appear child-like it may be that they are playing a role expected by adults rather
than displaying some necessary, age-related characteristics.
The readings and my commentary on them that constitute this book offer a
variety of ways to approach the understanding of childrens experiences in and
of the social world. Fundamental to this understanding is the recognition of the
many ways that adult biases impede such understandingbiases that are often
hard to avoid because in everyday life adults regularly take them for granted
and use them unreflectively. These assumptions that adults make about children
are crucially important to bring forward and identify if adult behavior towards
children and childrens behavior towards adults is to be understood. Only by
articulating such assumptions and setting them as topics of empirical research,
and as potentially falsifiable, is it possible to understand the varieties of
childrens possible behavior and the alternative adult stances that can be taken.
236
Such assumptions are not sociological knowledge; they are topics for
sociological research.
I have sought to present children as actors in social worlds, in many ways
faced with the same kinds of issues and concerns that adult actors face. If the
adult view of children as immature and but partially developed is set aside,
children emerge as full-fledged actors in the social world, drawing on the
resources they possess to make sense out of and act in the worlds that confront
them and to create social worlds of their own.
Against the background of the range and depth of childrens competence,
the idea of socialization as a process of creating group members emerges as
a process that would seem to require childrens participation, whether that
participation is actually recognized or not. Childrens views of this process
might fruitfully be studied. Socialization as a process of creating a self also
requires re-examination. If children are active participants in the creation of
their own selves, then the nature of that participation becomes available for
detailed examination. Sociological focus on adults as determinative of this
process seems questionable in the light of Mackays explicit and Sacks
implicit recognition of the competence which children must have in order to
understand the very things they are being taught and in order to do the very
things they do.
Given childrens competence, socialization also emerges as but one aspect
of childrens experiences. By dividing the sociological understanding of
children into two spheres, 1) children in adult worlds and 2) children in
childs worlds, it becomes possible to move beyond socialization. The
former sphere embodies an adult perspective towards children, with
socialization as one such adult perspective; the latter adopts childrens
perspectives. Both are important, for children inhabit both worlds, but they
are not the same. Sociological study has focused primarily on the former,
taking it to be the only possible view of children rather than merely one
view. I have sought to preserve the insights of studies that adopt an adult
perspective (as exemplified by those presented in Part II) while noting the
value of studies of children in their own worlds (as exemplified by the
articles in Part III). The description of children from an adult perspective is
clearly important sociological data, but just as clearly it is partial, not
complete. Recognition of its partiality allows for the consideration of
children in their own worlds and opens up other possibilities, such as
childrens views of adults worlds (the converse of adults views of childrens
worlds).
Studying children against the background of the ideas presented in this book
promises to contribute to the refinement of sociological knowledge about the
social world in general. Both the approaches suggested and the findings
presented here also have a variety of implications for adults who interact with
children, either professionally (as teachers, babysitters, doctors, social workers,
etc.) or socially (parents, friends, etc.). Here I simply allude to some such
implications.
Insights into adult assumptions about children may prove valuable for those
who want to alter their own behavior in relation to children, childrens
behavior, or both. Bringing assumptions to light allows them to be considered
and to be dismissed or adopted as results or judgment recommend. There are,
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Conclusion
however, both practical dangers and moral considerations in either denying or
recognizing childrens experiences.
If children were to be treated like any other person, adults in general and
those who spend extensive time with children in particular might find it
exceedingly difficult to operate. Adult power would be undermined. Indeed,
adults customarily have physical power available as a ready option to
convincing children to follow adult rules; foregoing such power would
require time and skills that many might find an imposition (were they not
simply to see such efforts as ridiculous). Would doctors find their time well
spent in obtaining informed consent from a 3-year-old? Such an example
may seem silly, but the option currently and routinely selected is to force
the child in spite of the childs view of the situation. Even where
explanations are offered, they are commonly offered as a kindness or a lure,
not as a moral obligation, and thus can be overridden if adults deem the
situation urgent. Thousands of ways that adults coerce childrenmany
deemed by adults as for childrens own goodoccur routinely. Taking
children seriously as actors in the world suggests that such coercion be
reconsidered, with implications that adults may find problematic. Many
taken-for-granted assumptions are used to justify adult actions towards
children. Perhaps some of the problems that adults experience with
adolescents have their source in the increasing inapplicability of adults
assumptions to those who have increasing power to reject being treated like
children.
I am not here arguing for granting children adult status, nor am I
arguing for the preservation of assumptions about children in order to
facilitate adult action. I am suggesting that sociologically fruitful
knowledge may present practical problems and am urging that sociological
knowlege not be denied but at the same time be adopted with caution as a
guide to practical action.
The distinctions I am making here may be clarified by two experiences I had
with children while I was in the midst of preparing this book and thus especially
sensitive to issues it raises. In the first instance, I walked by a 3-year-old. As I
passed his chair, I patted him on the head. Then I stopped and asked, Do you
mind if I pat you on the head like that? He considered a moment and then said
No. Do you like it? Yes. So its okay if I do it when I walk by? Yes. My
recognition of the presumptuousness of my initial act came from the kind of
considerations presented throughout this book.
In the second instance, a 4-year-old was carrying around baby kittens in
ways that seemed to me clearly perilous to them. I was not convinced by
her claim that They like it, and I attempted, unsuccessfully, to take them
away from her and divert her to other activities. She was not about to be
convinced of the legitimacy of my argument, nor was I by hers, so in effect
I pulled rank and, as an adult and bigger, I acted as I saw fit and moved
the kittens beyond her reach. Here too I would say I acted against the
background of what has been presented in this book, for I acknowledged
the situation as one in which I could and did use my power. I certainly
cannot claim that I did what I did for the childs good or to teach her. I did
it for what I saw as the kittens good.
238
I have chosen these two incidents with which to conclude in order to make
the point that the goal of this book is not to show how children ought to be
treated but to suggest the implications of however they are treated. Children
are customarily treated simply as children. In the first incident described
above, I defined the child as a person; in the second, I defined the child as one
with less power, a decision I saw as justified by the kittens welfare. Whatever
the practical advantages and disadvantages of treating children like children,
sociological undestanding requires moving beyond such a view to a
consideration of children in their own right.
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Appendix I: Rules for Reading and
Writing Sociology
Introduction
I wrote a version of Rules for reading and writing sociology some years ago in
order to provide a common body of knowledge for students who had varying
backgrounds in sociology. Students have found it useful in directing both their
reading and writing. I have included it here to serve the same function, as well
as to provide one theoretical and methodological framework within which to
consider the materials in this book and to give guidance to those unfamiliar
with sociology. Readers will find that the rules I set forth are followed more
closely by the authors whose works comprise this book than they are by
sociologists in general.
Although certain fundamental ideas are shared by many sociologists, any
presention of sociology as a unitary and unified discipline contributes to what
Mitroff (1974) has called the storybook image of science. Different
sociologists indeed do sociology differently and a number of theoretical and
methodological frameworks exist. Certainly my own views draw heavily on the
works of many other sociologists, but what I present here reflects what I
actually do and think when I am doing sociology. Those new to sociology are
advised to keep in mind that other sociologists would present somewhat
different ideas and give somewhat different emphases. (Indeed teachers using
this book as a textbook might want to write and substitute their own Rules for
reading and writing sociology.)
The perspective on sociology that I take draws heavily on phenomenology,
the philosophical method developed by Edmund Husserl (1913; see also Kohak,
1978). Phenomenology emphasizes the importance of conducting studies from
the point of view of those being studied and encourages researchers to suspend
judgments about those studied. Husserl urges respect for the originary right of
all data, i.e. its existence in its own terms prior to its formulation by
investigators.
I define sociology as that science that systematically studies the social, i.e. the
interactions of two or more individuals and the many products of those
interactions. It is a science in the sense that its goal is understanding in and of
itself. Towards this end it provides specified procedures that others can
reproduce and it develops theories that can be tested by data gathered from the
240
world of everyday life. Other social sciencespsychology, anthropology,
history, political science, economicsare concerned with the social, but only
for sociology is it the subject matter, the central topic of investigation.
Sociology is concerned with individuals as vehicles of social behavior. In
contrast, individuals as individuals are the subject matter of psychology.
Sociology studies interactions that take place between and among individuals
in face-to-face situations, over the telephone, through the mail, etc. and in the
myriad circumstances in which individuals exchange ideas. It also examines the
social arrangements and institutions that individuals together create, sustain,
and destroyeverything from parties to international governments.
The Rules
Different views of sociology produce different rules for how sociology is to be
done, how the works of others are to be read and understood, and how ones
own work is to be written. Often such rules are implicit in the work of
sociologists. I seek here to articulate the rules I use and that emerge from my
view of sociology. They are designed to provide a perspective from which to
read critically the works of others and to assess ones own sociological writings.
I have identified eight rules:
Rule 1: Be constantly alert for taken-for-granted assumptions both of
sociologists and of those being studied.
Rule 2: Draw inferences carefully.
Rule 3: Beware of the magical use of variables.
Rule 4: Suspend both belief and doubt about everything that can be
seen/heard/read.
Rule 5: Make sociological claims that are falsifiable.
Rule 6: Distinguish between what is and what ought to be.
Rule 7: Distinguish between what people say and what they do.
Rule 8. Respect the originary right of all data.
For purposes of clarity, these rules are stated here in formal and absolute terms,
but any of these rules is open to revision if it is found to distort the data that
it is designed to explain. Some of the rules may initially appear problematic,
but readers are urged to try using them before assessing their usefulness. When,
in reading or writing, one finds any of these rules to have been violated, one
can reasonably ask two questions: 1) has the writer in some way distorted the
data and thus broken the rule? or 2) does the rule need revision?
Rule 1: Be constantly alert for taken-for-granted assumptions
both of sociologists and of those being studied
Identification of taken-for-granted assumptions is a part of both the goal and
the method of sociology as I conceive of it. As a goal of sociology, it provides
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sociologists with data that would otherwise be missed, enabling them to
unearth a wide range of new topics for study. As a method, identification of
such assumptions enables sociologists to recognize possible sources of bias and
overcome them.
Our everyday lives take place against the background of a host of
assumptions that we take for granted. A number of different strategies can be
used to bring them into our awareness. One involves transforming statements
of fact into questions for empirical investigation. (Empirical refers to those
features of the world that can be observed and documented.) A common, but to
my mind inappropriate, place for research to begina place that embodies a
host of taken-for-granted assumptionsis with an unexamined claim that
something exists. Consider, for example, the following four questions that
might serve as topics for research:

Why do women have more trouble with math than men?
Why do people look like their dogs?
Why is divorce on the increase?
Why do children have difficulty understanding death?

Starting research without examining taken-for-granted assumptions on which
research questions are based, and thus without examining the legitimacy of the
initial questions, can lead researchers off on false trails. Although the above
four questions may appear reasonable, and can perhaps be supported by a host
of common-sense explanations, in the absence of actual empirical investigation
we cannot, as sociologists, claim that the assumptions they embody are indeed
accurate. Those embarking on a study based on any of these four questions
might profitably begin by rephrasing as follows:

Do women have more trouble with math than men?
Do people look like their dogs?
Is divorce on the increase?
Do children have difficulty understanding death?

Such rephrasing makes empirical investigation possible. And if, for example,
study demonstrates that divorce is not on the increase or that children do not
have particular difficulty in understanding death, one is saved from having
looked for reasons to explain something that doesnt exist.
Anyone who has begun writing a paper to prove a point and then found
that ones initial ideas were in error knows the frustration and the sense of
having wasted time. Neither distorting the data nor giving up is a fully
satisfactory solution. The way to avoid such a problem is to phrase ones
initial topic in such terms that any data gathered, whether supportive or
destructive of ones initial ideas, can be used as new information about how
the social world works. Even the most obvious of statements, those assumed
to be unquestionably true in everyday life according to the canons of
common sense, may, under empirical investigation, turn out to be false or to
require modification.
One of my students carried out a modest study designed initially to explain
why people look like their dogs. At my suggestion, she reformulated her topic
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and pursued the question: Do people look like their dogs? She took separate
pictures of people and their dogs and asked respondents to match up the correct
pairs. Preliminary results suggested that the task was far more difficult than
everyday common-sense theories would predict. It seems that if one sees people
and dogs together, one can find common features that support the view that
they look alike, but when people and their dogs are separated, those common
features are not obvious enough to allow for ready reuniting. Had the study
pursued the question of why people look like their dogs, the findings would
have been meaningless.
Another approach for increasing awareness of the sphere of the taken-for-
granted involves the constant repetition of the question: How do I know that?
This question directs one again and again to the evidence, or lack of evidence,
for claims being made. Unsupported statements emerge as assumptions rather
than as facts and thus become available for empirical testing.
Another useful technique is to adopt a Martian perspective, to pretend that
one is an absolute stranger to any situation one is studying and that one must
question everything that happens. Questioning can produce abundant and
detailed information that would remain concealed if one were simply to assume
that one knows what is going on. A Martian perspective is a way of pretending
that one doesnt know anything; a surprising result of such a stance is that one
learns that one indeed didnt know a great deal.
What initially seems obvious can, with questioning, turn out to be far from
obvious. For example, in our everyday lives we know what people mean when
they say Hello. How are you? and we know that the correct response in
general is Fine, thank you. How are you? To direct questions to this pair of
utterances, however, is to embark on a study of a complex set of taken-for-
granted assumptions and interrelated meanings. Consider how one might teach
a Martian to use this greeting pattern. Under what circumstances is it
appropriate? inappropriate? How does one decide? If one goes to a doctor
because one is ill and the doctor asks How are you? the response Fine, thank
you. How are you? might seem distinctly odd. A close examination of greetings
would disclose many rules that are far from obvious.
Researchers can also gain insights into that which is taken for granted by
studying instances of rule-breaking. Rules that are taken for granted when all
is running smoothly come into view when they are broken. Embarrassment,
anger, outrage, insult, or a diffuse sense that something is wrong suggest
that rules of some kind are being broken or challenged. When
embarrassment, anger, etc. appear, it is sociologically useful to inquire into
the source of such responses. One strategy researchers use to establish the
existence of a social rule is to engage in behavior that would be a violation of
that rule if indeed it existed and then chronicle the responses. Harold
Garfinkel (1967) suggested that there were social rules for how close people
could stand to one another when talking. To test this claim, he asked students
to talk to people and at the same time to move closer and closer to them. The
responses of those others suggested that indeed there are social rules for
talking distance.
Humor is another invaluable aid in bringing to light the taken-for-granted. A
fundamental element in humor is the violation of assumptions. The surprise of
humor is the surprise of the unexpected. Humor can bring to light assumptions
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and problems that are obscured by a more serious interpretation. When I am
constructing a questionnaire and want to assess elements in it that might
embody taken-for-granted assumptions, I administer the questionnaire to
people I know who have senses of humor and are willing to bring them to bear
on my task. Their humorous interpretations make clear to me alternative
understandings of which I was previously unaware.
Identification of taken-for-granted assumptions seems to be of necessity a
never-ending task. Nonetheless, every assumption that is identified contributes
to our understanding of the social world.
Rule 2: Draw inferences carefully
Little that goes on in the social world is directly observable. Routinely there
is a gap between what is seen and what it is taken to mean, a gap that is
filled by inferences. I can see a baby crying but I can only infer the reason or
meaning. Our everyday conversations are filled with talk of inferences, of
drawing the link between what was done and what it meant. Gossip, for
example, can be seen as a quest for meaning in the face of a variety of
possible inferences.
The same behavior can have a variety of meanings; selecting one meaning
over another in any particular situation involves inferences. In everyday life,
inferences are made on the basis of our past experiences and knowledge, our
common sense, our hopes and fears and beliefs, and anything else we can bring
to bear on our search for understanding. What does a babys first smile mean?
Pleasure? Gas? Both are inferences, based on behavior and an interpretation of
that behavior. Given the essential ambiguity of all behavior and the
tentativeness of all inferences, it is particularly important for sociological
knowledge that researchers display great care in drawing inferences if they are
to do science rather than simply rephrase common sense.
Inferences are embodied in our everyday language in such a way that they
may be obscured: I frown and you see my frown as a response to something
you did. You yell and I react by crying. Built into, though obscured, by such
terms is an inference: that the behavior of one person caused the action of the
other. But do we know this? Perhaps I was frowning at something I was
thinking. Perhaps I was crying because I was unhappy even before you started
yelling. Sociological knowledge requires pursuing issues beyond common-sense
inferences. One way to minimize the inferences in descriptions of observations
is to refuse to use words that embody inferenceswords like response and
reaction and causeand to struggle with and gain insight from the
resolution of the problems that thus arise.
Another way to be cautious in the use of inferences is to seek out multiple
inferences to explain any given behavior rather than stopping with the first
explanation that comes to hand. The baby is crying. How many factors might
be identified as possible reasons? The first reason or the obvious reason is not
necessarily the real reason. Identification of a variety of possible explanations
provides a broader base for further investigation. It also recognizes that humans
act on the basis of a wide variety of motives, that more than one motive can be
involved in any given act, that the motives that one person can attribute to
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others are not necessarily the motives that those people attribute to their own
acts, and that motives can be applied to actions both before and after the acts
themselves. The answer to the question: Why did you do that? can, and does,
change over time. When, for example, students are asked at the time they begin
college and again after graduation why they chose the college they did, their
answers are likely to be quite different.
In studying inferences, it is important for sociologists to recognize both
the inferences made by those they are studying and the inferences they as
sociologists are making. Those made by people in their everyday lives are
one of the fundamental topics of sociological study; those made by
sociologists, on the other hand, can distort data unless unnecessary
inferences are eliminated and necessary ones articulated so that their use is
open to scrutiny.
Rule 3: Beware of the magical use of variables
Sociologists, along with all other scientists, regularly employ variables in
their analysis. A variable is any characteristic that can have two or more
values, e.g. gender (male/female), barometric pressure (rising/falling/steady),
age, religion. The values of a variable may be quantitative (expressed in
numbers, e.g. height, years of school completed) or qualitative (expressed in
words, e.g. season of the year, country of birth). As sociological studies have
cumulated, a number of variables that seem particularly important in
explaining social behavior have been identified. Such variables include age,
sex, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, marital status, and education.
People who share one value of one of these characteristics (e.g. a particular
religion) may share a host of other social characteristics as well. Note,
however, that they may share these characteristics; in no sense do they have
to. In sociological phrasing one would say that people who are members of
the same religion are likely to possess certain other attributes. The famous
nineteenth century sociologist Emile Durkheim found, for example, that
Protestants were more likely to commit suicide than were Catholics and that
married women and single men were more likely to commit suicide than
single women and married men.
The frequent importance of a certain variable or cluster of variables in
understanding certain kinds of social behavior has, however, often led to their
being invoked in a somewhat magical way as a source of explanation. Slight
differences between males and females, blacks and whites, upper and lower
class members, etc. have at times been given inordinate significance. Some
sociologists routinely collect information about a whole set of rather standard
variables and upon occasion try to use them to explain behavior that might well
be more satisfactorily understood in terms of less common or more subtle kinds
of variables.
Caution in the use of variables begins with a renunciation of the practice of
gathering data on a programmatic set of variables just because other
sociologists do so. Certainly there are times when it is reasonable to suspect that
the most commonly used variables will be useful in analyzing a particular topic,
but equally certain is that there are times when such variables have no apparent
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significance. It is in these latter instances that I speak of variables being used in
a magical way, for they are being treated as having some special explanatory
power over and above what reason would suggest.
Any variable, but particularly those variables most commonly used by
sociologists, can embody common-sense, everyday assumptions about what
aspects of the social world are of greatest importance. To use such variables
may be to perpetuate rather than study common-sense ideas. Thus common
sense tells us that men and women will differ in spheres where sociological
study might demonstrate they do not differ, but unless room is made for this
latter finding to emerge, it will not. Thus men and women do indeed differ in
some characteristics but the routine use of gender as a variable in sociological
studies suggests, quite inaccurately, that they differ in all characteristics. Reports
of opinion polls, for example, may state that men approve of one political
candidate while women do not. Such a claim may be heard as suggesting that
100 per cent of the men and 0 per cent of the women expressed approval. When
one examines the percentages on which such a claim is based, however, it may
turn out that 60 per cent of the men but only 40 per cent of the women expressed
approval. What is ignored is that 40 per cent of the women and men gave the
same response and only 20 per cent did not.
If some variables have come to be used in a magical fashion by sociologists,
those variables that are quantifiable (i.e. able to be expressed in numbers)
have come to be used as if they had especially magical features, as if in some
sense being quantifiable is better than being unquantifiable. Certainly
quantifiable variables possess advantages for analysis: numbers are a convenient
form for presenting findings, they make the collation of data a relatively easy
task, and they can be manipulated statistically. Anyone faced with sociological
results in quantitative form (e.g. those derived from a questionnaire where all
the responses are given in numbers) and pages and pages of descriptive field
notes will, for ease of the task, choose the former to work with, but ease does
not necessarily mean good. Nonetheless, a commonsense assumption exists
that numerical or quantitative distinctions are scientific and descriptive or
qualitative ones are not.
Indeed it is useful at times to be able to give numbers to variables but in no
sense is such a practice necessarily scientific. Qualitative information, presented
in qualitative form, can be equally scientific. Quantitative data can, for
example, allow a sample to be drawn from a population in such a way that it is
possible to make statistical claims about the frequency with which something
will occur in that population. Quantitative data, however, cannot provide the
kind of information on what, how, or why something occurs that qualitative
data can provide.
So strong is the bias in favor of quantitative findings that qualitative findings
may be expressed in terms that suggest a quantitative basis to claims that in fact
is absent. To argue on the basis of qualitative, descriptive studies where
sampling or the study of an entire population has not been done that something
has occurred usually, often, etc. or that something is true of most, many,
the majority, or few of those studied is meaningless. For example, if I find in
my college class of twenty students that ten ask questions in class and ten do
not, to say that half of the students ask/do not ask questions does not tell me
anything additional. If eleven bring coffee to class and nine do not, to say that
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the majority does so is, although true, actually a distortion of the data, for the
majority sounds like more. Furthermore, formulation in terms of most, the
majority, etc. seems to lend itself to generalization to the college as a whole or
even to college students as a whole. On the basis of the example just presented,
there is some tendency to understand that data as meaning that the majority of
college students bring coffee to class. Clearly such a claim could only be made
reliably by studying the entire population of college students or a sample drawn
from that population.
When qualitative studies focus on intensive investigation of small numbers
of people, the dangers of using variables magically become particularly acute.
In a small study it is impossible to determine which activities and ideas are
influenced by age, sex, race, etc., which by personality, and which by the
particular social context being studied. An intensive study of a small number
of mothers and their children, for example, cannot establish which findings
are related to the roles of mother and child and which to a host of other
variables. That the research is focused on mothers does not mean that the
observed behavior of the mothers is caused by or even influenced by their
motherness, rather than by their age, their womanness, or social
expectations.
What one can say on the basis of studies of small numbers of people is that
the observed activities indeed took place in the ways in which they were
observed to take place. Things happened that would not have been seen and
thus known about if such observations hadnt been done. Sociologists thus can
learn what actions are possible in specific contextsnot necessary or likely but
simply possible. To discover what people do is an important outcome of
sociological study. The findings may not provide information about frequency,
but in sacrificing such knowledge one can gain detailed understanding about
how particular activities can be engaged in. Such knowledge is necessarily prior
to quantification, for it is impossible to know how many until one knows how
many whats. Ultimately the question of how many may turn out to be far less
important than questions related to alternative possibilities that exist in the
social world.
Sociologists are equally concerned with those things that are true of many
people and those that are true of a few. Common features and alternative, less
common ones are equally important socially and sociologically. Qualitative
data that provides information not about how many people act in certain ways
but about the alternative ways in which people act can be both scientific and
useful for understanding the social world. To learn what happens and how is as
valuable, as difficult, as scientific, and as sociological as to learn how frequently
it happens. Qualitative studies are particularly valuable in providing
information about the many different ways that people act.
Rule 4: Suspend both belief and doubt about everything
that can be seen/ heard/read
This rule advocates a critical stance. To be critical is not, however, to find fault
with everything. Neither gullibility nor cynicism alone is as fruitful a
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sociological approach as is the suspension of both belief and doubt. Such
suspension is particularly important in conducting sociological studies, for it
makes it possible to take seriously the views of those being studied without
necessarily either accepting or rejecting those views. Judgment is suspended in
the service of understanding.
Such suspension is not necessarily useful in the conduct of our everyday lives,
for everyday actions are routinely based on judgments and choices, on ideas,
beliefs, values, and desires. Without judgment, choice is meaningless if not
impossible. In everyday life, for example, one might quite reasonably be a
follower of one religion and find another religion strange or wrong or even
dangerous. For a sociologist to take such a stance, however, would be to distort
data gathered on either of those religions. In sociology, judgment on the part of
the sociologist interferes with understanding data in its own terms. When
sociologists suspend their own judgments, those being studied can be viewed in
their own terms and in light of their own values. The goal of sociology as a
science is to understand social behavior, not to catalogue sociologists different
judgments about that data.
A critical stance involves a weighing of all evidence. It also involves a
recognition that others may come to different conclusions, not because others
are wrong but simply because they are different. If one finds anothers ideas
strange, unbelievable, or unimaginable, such does not mean that the other finds
them so. Others may hold their ideas just as seriously and sincerely as one holds
ones own. Or they may not. Either is possible.
There is a particular temptation to believe the printed word: Of course its
true. I read it in a book. A particularly extreme instance of the power of the
written word can be seen in the following interchange between a doctor and
patient, presented by Oakley in her sociological study of childbirth:

Doctor [reading case notes]: Ah, I see youve got a boy and a girl.
Patient: No, two girls.
Doctor: Really, are you sure? I thought it said . . . [checks in case
notes] oh no, youre quite right, two girls.
(Oakley, 1980:41)

Truth is not a necessary outcome of the process of writing something down.
Printed ideas can be wrong. They can even be a product of deceit. In critically
assessing sociological material it is appropriate to base decisions on evidence
that can be documented and can be reproduced by others. Although this task is
by no means easy and perhaps never entirely successful, it serves as a goal that
is at least partially realizable and fruitful even in approximation.
There can also be a temptation to believe and accept the point of view of
those people and groups one is studying and about whom one is gathering data.
Clearly subjects of a study have specialized knowledge about their own beliefs
and activities, but their knowledge is not the only knowledge available. It is one
thing to believe that ones subjects of study are sincere and quite another to
believe that they are correct. Indeed sociologists studying categories and groups
with perspectives that differ from one another may find themselves agreeing
with whatever group they are currently studying. As a temporary strategy,
belief in ones subjects perspectives is useful, but in sociological analysis it is
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important to distinguish between participants views and other views and to
refrain from arranging them hierarchically, from better to worse. The
knowledge of sociologists and that of group members being studied is likely to
be differentneither knowledge has privileged status for sociologists, for each
makes sense in its own sphere. Sociologists knowledge works for sociology;
members knowledge works for members.
Suspension of belief and doubt, and thus of judgment, although difficult, can
provide useful sociological insights. It allows an appreciation of varied points of
view and activities and a consequent understanding. It allows the many and
contradictory things that people do and say and believe to come into view. It
encourages constant questioning of what people do and say and write and read.
It brings forward the richness, complexity, and ambiguity of social life as it is
lived. It avoids the pitfalls of both gullibility and cynicism while preserving the
virtues of both.
Rule 5: Make sociological claims that are falsifiable
A relatively simple but often violated rule, this one advises the statement of
sociological claims, questions, and hypotheses in terms that allow for either
yes or no answers, either positive or negative findings, either proof or
refutation. Such a rule might at first appear strange. One is tempted to say,
Of course. Why conduct a study if you already know the answer? In
practice, however, one may find oneself hoping that findings turn out one
way rather than another. The hope in itself is not a problem, but designing a
study to fulfill rather than to test a hope violates the spirit and method of
science.
Studies of highly emotional topics are particularly likely to be constructed
in ways that make one kind of finding more likely than another. For example,
those who study child abuse may expect abusers to possess a set of bad
qualities and may look harder for those qualities than for good ones. Studies
of any kind of abusewhether child, spouse, or drug abuseare so
formulated that the notion of abuse itself is not falsifiable and not a topic of
study. The very use of the term abuser stands in the way of understanding
the perspective of those so labeled. To study abusers suggests from the outset
that such people are bad and can obscure the fact that they may have their
own perspectives from which what they do is not abuse but something else,
e.g. discipline.
In Rule 1 it was noted that unexamined statements may embody
assumptions that, when subjected to critical study, cannot be empirically
validated or can indeed be proved erroneous. Unexamined statements may
also establish certain claims as unfalsifiable, for one cannot prove false that
which remains in the taken-for-granted sphere. Reconsider the question:
Why do people look like their dogs? Such a formulation makes it very
difficult to find that people do not look like their dogs. Rephrasing the
research question in the terms: Do people look like their dogs? makes the
claim falsifiable and makes possible the marshalling of data both in support
and refutation of the claim.
Statement of topics for study in falsifiable terms is quite easy once the need
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for such a form is recognized. The need, however, although quite apparent in
retrospect, is not always so obvious at the start of a study. It is possible for one
to begin a study with such a strong taken-for-granted assumption that
something is true that the possibility of questioning that beginning point never
arises. The advice to state claims in falsifiable termseven when those claims
appear, in common-sense terms, obviously truedirects one to examine
statements that otherwise might go unexamined and that may indeed turn out
to be false.
Rule 6: Distinguish between what is and what ought to be
Sociology can be a rich source of surprises about how the social world works,
but not all such surprises are pleasant ones. The social world does not always
turn out to be the way one hopes it will be. Two different kinds of problems can
arise when a discrepancy exists between what is and what either readers of
sociology or sociologists themselves think ought to be.
First, when readers are negatively affected by sociologists findings
shocked, disappointed, saddenedthey may direct their negative feelings
towards sociologists, somehow holding them responsible for the beliefs and/
or actions of those studied. For sociologists to present the views of those
studied is not, however, a necessary indication that sociologists do (or, for
that matter, do not) hold those views. Sociologists views of the matter are
not at issue, for they are not the subject of study. Good sociologists can
study bad things. Sociologists have been criticized for agreeing with those
they studied when those sociologists have only reported the views of those
studied; sociologists have also been criticized for not speaking out against
those they have studied. The Adlers study of marijuana smoking by children
under the age of eight (1978), Humphreys study of impersonal sex in public
restrooms (1970), Letkemanns study of Crime as Work (1973), and Roths
study of alternative medicine (1977) are but a few of the studies that have
come in for one or both of these kinds of criticism, and in each instance it is
clear to me that the authors did no more nor less than simply let the data
speak for itself. In reading the works of others, it is helpful to recognize that
the relationship between the views of those studied and those of the author
are not identical. To present a view is not necessarily to espouse it. In the
absence of any explicit statement by the author, inferences about the authors
views are risky at best.
Second, in the face of unpleasant findings, one can claim that they must be
erroneous because people ought not to do that or ought not to be like that.
Although it may be true in some spheres that wishing can make it so, such a
stance does not advance sociological inquiry. For example, studies that present
data about adults who are aroused by and enjoy child pornography may be
rejected by some simply because they think that adults ought not to be aroused
in such a way. Similarly, studies that suggest that young children who engage in
sexual relations with adults may find pleasurable elements in such encounters
may be dismissed automatically because of a view that children couldnt feel
that way and that since such encounters are judged bad, all aspects of them
must be bad. A moral view that something ought not to be is not, however,
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evidence against existence. Scientific refutation requires more than a claim of
immorality.
When encountering findings that contradict ones view of what ought to be,
one need not accept such findings without question. Studies can be wrong. A
common-sense intuition of such wrongness can serve as a useful beginning
point in the search for evidence to refute claims. Intuition is however a useful
beginning point, not a conclusion. I remember hearing a paper presented at the
meetings of a sociological association where the presenter was arguing, on the
basis of a study conducted, that white men use that part of the brain associated
with logic and reason and that black men and women of both races use that
part associated with emotion and artistic ability. My own values were severely
assaulted by such a finding and I dearly wanted it to be wrong. For me,
however, the most significant response to the study was an audience members
perceptive and incisive critique of the methodology of the study, a critique that
made clear the fallacy of the findings. Although I admit to being relieved by this
outcome, I also feel that if the study had been methodologically sound and the
findings scientifically justified, I as a sociologist would be compelled to take
them into account, like them or not.
What is and what ought to be are both possible topics for sociological analysis.
Studies of what is can be conducted through a variety of methods, including
direct observation. Studies of what ought to be require somewhat different
approaches and are necessarily centered on notions held by members of the
social world. As such they cannot be directly observed but require analysis of
the talk of those being studied or other such indirect methods. The views of
sociologists on what ought to be have no place in their findings even though,
as members of society, sociologists may be vitally interested in working towards
social change.
One of sociologys strengths is its ability to describe the social world as it is
experienced by social members. Members notions of what ought to be
certainly influence actions and thus are legitimate topics of sociological study in
their own right. Knowledge of what is also provides a firm foundation for
bringing about social change, for it is this dimension of what is that is the very
focus of change. The confounding of what is and what ought to be leads to
confused findings and impedes both understanding and social change. The
clearer the view of what is, the more adequately can one work towards
bringing about what ought to be.
Rule 7: Distinguish between what people say and what they do
In everyday life, we perceive the relationship between talk and action quite
differently from the way that sociologists view that relationship. In everyday
life, we commonly take what people say as an indicator of what they do or will
do or have done. We recognize lying and delusion and changed plans and so
forth, so what people say is not necessarily what they do, but all other things
being equal, we expect a strong relationship between reports of action and the
action itself.
Given sociologists concern with identifying taken-for-granted
assumptions, it is not surprising that they question the relationship between
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talk and action as it is characterized in everyday life. Two major reasons for
questioning this relationship can be identified. First, studies that compare
what people say with what sociologists can observe them doing demonstrate
discrepancies that are far more complex and subtle than what can be
attributed to lying or mistakes. The following example, drawn from a study
of schizophrenia by Meynell, although extreme, displays with clarity the
complexity of the matter:

Maya said her parents constantly put difficulties in the way of her reading
what she wanted, which they denied with laughter. When Maya
mentioned her Bible reading as an example, her father, still laughing,
asked why she wanted to read the Bible anyway when she could find out
about that kind of thing better from other books. Again, the father and
mother constantly winked at one another when the whole family was
interviewed together. The interviewer commented on this after twenty
minutes of the interview; and the parents denied they were doing it, went
on doing it, and continued to deny that they were doing it (Meynell,
1971:22, emphasis added).

Certainly it is not clear what was going on hereand the author does not
explain furtherbut what is clear is that what people say and what they do is
not the same.
Second, since there are social rules for talk, and since one of those rules is
that concealing or distorting the truth is permissible or even mandated in
certain situations, it is evident that talk about what one does will not always or
necessarily reflect what one can be observed to do. For example, if I ask
students in large sociology class to raise their hands if they have ever snorted
cocaine, or if they have engaged in sexual relations in the past twenty-four
hours, I would be considered naive if I took the show of hands (or absence
thereof) as evidence of those students behavior. Indeed, simply answering the
question truthfully might seem quite strange in such a setting, and even hand-
raisers might not be believed.
A useful sociological dictum is: If you want to know what people do,
watch them. If you want to know what they say, ask them. A common but,
to my mind, risky practice is to ask people, e.g. through interviews or
questionnaires, what they do and then present the findings as if they
documented actions rather than talk. Equally risky is the practice of
observing what people do and then, on the basis of those observations,
presenting as data speculations on peoples reasons for their actions. Reasons
cannot be observed and claims about ones actions cannot be sociologically
substituted for observations of those actions.
Talk and action are both social behavior but in some respects they are
different kinds of social behavior. They do different things. In my own work I
have recently begun exploring the notion that one function of talk may be to
make the social world look more structured and planful and predictable than it
can be observed to be, but at this point I mention this idea without
documentation simply as one way in which talk and action might differ.
Whatever the differences and similarities between talk and action as social
behavior, what is clear that they are not the same thing, cannot stand in place of
252
one another, and that neither is reducible to the other. Each is a legitimate topic
of sociological study but studying one is not studying the other.
Rule 8: Respect the originary right of all data
This rule is drawn directly from Husserls phenomenology. For sociologists it is
an affirmation that the datawhat one studiesis primary. Data may be
complex, ambiguous, strange, apparently irrational, even unbelievable, but
even so, the task of sociology is to present the data with those qualities, not to
revise and clean-up findings so that they appear normal. Data that in its very
nature is ambiguous is distorted if it is presented as if it were unambiguous.
Take for example the notion of right to life. It is not uncommon for those who
espouse such a position to reject abortion and support capital punishment,
thereby not supporting everyones right to life but only those of the unborn.
The very notion of right to life is ambiguous; any study that neglects or defines
away or corrects this ambiguity also distorts the data.
This rule also cautions against overgeneralizing or going beyond the data.
Even one case or instance can be sociologically significant as one social
possibility but one case does not provide any empirical evidence that other cases
can be found. Only the actual finding of them can serve as empirical evidence.
Generalization is a fundamental aspect of any science but only if it is faithful to
the dataall the data but not more than the datacan it be taken as
scientifically valid.
The originary right of all data can emerge through a variety of methods.
Limiting methods to those that look scientific, e.g. those that produce
quantitative results, restricts the full display of data. Any promising method
old or newdirected towards gaining understanding would seem worth a try,
success being judged by outcomes, not by appearances or expectations.
Conclusion
The rules detailed in the foregoing can be used as guides both in conducting
studies and in assessing the work of others. In all probability, however, it will be
easier to apply these rules to others, for others failings have a tendency to be
clearer than ones own. Ones own work can take on the quality of something
special to which such criteria do not apply. Nonetheless, applying these rules to
others and ones own work can serve as a critical framework for assessment
and revision of ideas. Different readers and writers may well interpret and use
these rules in somewhat different ways, so a final caution may serve as a useful
guide. In the words of Swami Rama (quoted in Boyd, 1974:271):

Every person can have his own hypothesis, but one still has to account for
the facts.
253
Appendix II: Exercises
Through the years I have developed a variety of different exercises to
accompany the chapters of this book. They can serve as the basis for papers,
class presentations, or simply informal discussions and can be carried out at
various levels of expertise. Below are listed exercises that have proved useful,
instructive, and enjoyable. Further ideas are provided in the index entry
sociological study, suggestions for.
Chapter 1: Becoming a Member of SocietySocialization
and Chapter 2: Beyond Socialization
Examine ones own childhood in terms of those things that were taught by
agents of socialization. Distinguish between those that were/were not accepted
and that do/do not constitute a part of ones present day life. Direct attention to
the following questions: Do you do everything you were taught to do, be, think,
etc.? How do you choose which teachings to accept and which to reject?
Chapter 3: Conceptions of Children and Models of
Socialization
Gather historical and/or current information on children engaged in productive
economic work. (The illegality of child labor in many countries should not
obscure the fact that children nonetheless engage in a wide range of productive
work activities.) Seek specific details of the work that children can do and use
that data as a basis for examining some of the many competencies of children.
Child labor laws are one useful source of data.
Chapter 4: The Least-Adult Role in Studying Children and
Chapter 5: Studying Children: Phenomenological Insights
Use these chapters as methodological and theoretical guides in conducting
studies of children.
254
Chapter 6: Once Upon a Time
Observe the interactions between adult animals and young animals of the same
species. Data sources include zoos, pet stores, and the homes of those whose
pets have new offspring. Such observations are particularly effective when one
is not familiar with the species and thus must determine which are the adults
and which the children, which the mothers and which the fathers, e.g. snakes,
turtles.
Chapter 7: Tinydopers: A Case Study of Deviant Socialization
Observe children in an adult setting and identify adults rules for children in
that setting. Justify the choice of setting as adult, e.g. children are not
supposed to be there (a bar/pub), children are a disturbance (an exclusive
expensive restaurant). Consider both adults rules for childrens behavior in
such a setting and childrens options and resources. Address the questions:
Where do children fit in an adult world? What roles are they expected to play?
Chapter 8: Dancing When the Music is Over: A Study of
Deviance in a Kindergarten Classroom
Those who work with children might find it especially helpful, though also
difficult, to have their activities studied in the way described in this paper.
Chapter 9: Watching People Watching Babies
Continue gathering the kind of data described in this study.
Chapter 10: The Culture of Children
With a group of people, ask participants simply to begin quoting rhymes and
demonstrating games remembered from childhood. Urge participants to join in
with rhymes and games they know. Those from very different parts of a country
or even different countries are able to display shared knowledge.
Chapter 11: Kids, Culture and Innocents
Provide data to support the claim that some children are not considered
children or childlike.
255
Appendix II
Chapter 12: Childrens Negotiation of Meaning
Following the guidelines set forth in the Concluding Note to this article,
examine adults use of different involvement stances.
Chapter 13: Children Doing Artwork
Observe children playing a game or engaging in an activity of their own making
and describe the rules they use. Such rules can be inferred from behavior or
articulated by children in response to questioning. Use of both observations and
questioning, although likely to provide discrepant answers, can be especially
interesting. Asking children to teach one a game is a particularly useful strategy
for data-gathering. If the game under investigation has written rules (often
referred to in adult-centric terms as real rules, e.g. board games), such rules
can serve as a basis of comparison but should not be used as determinative of
correct or incorrect play. Card games played by children who cannot yet read
can be especially instructive.
Chapter 14: On the Analysability of Stories by Children
Listen to adults talking to children who are just learning to talk, focusing on the
attributions adults make to children in terms of what they mean. Make detailed
transcripts of such conversations and use them to exemplify Sacks maxims.
Chapter 15: The Hard Times of Childhood and
Childrens Strategies for Dealing with Them
Describe memories of ones childhood, with particular emphasis on the
difficulties of being a child. What was hard? unfair? unable to be done?
Describe any strategies developed to cope with ones hard times. Draw
examples from as young an age as possible.
256

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Notes on Contributors

Patricia A.Adler received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. An
Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, she has written and
taught in the areas of deviance, social theory, and the sociology of children. Her
publications include Wheeling and Dealing, The Sociology of Financial Markets, and
Intense loyalty in organizations.
Peter Adler received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. He is
Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of Denver. His research
interests include social psychology, qualitative methods, and the sociology of sport and
leisure. Recent publications include Membership Roles in Field Research, Everyday life
sociology, and The glorified self.
The Adlers edit the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography and Sociological Studies of
Child Development. Their most recent book, Backboards and Blackboards, based on a
five-year participant observation study of college athletes, will be published in 1991.
Brigitte Berger received her Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research, New York.
She is Professor of Sociology at Boston University. Her works include The War of the
Family: Capturing the Middle Ground and Child Care and Mediating Structure.
Peter L.Berger received his Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research, New York.
He is University Professor, Professor of Sociology and of Religion, and Head of The
Institute for the Study of Economic Culture at Boston University. His books include
Invitation to Sociology, A Rumor of Angels, and, with Thomas Luckmann, The Social
Construction of Reality.
Erica Cavin received her Bachelor of Science degree in Education from Wheelock
College. She has taught in nursery schools and day care centers, has published an article
entitled Children drawing, and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of
Sociology at Boston University.
Mary Constantine Joyce received her Bachelor of Science degree in Education from
Wheelock College. She has taught in a preschool program and is currently the director
of a kindergarten and extended day program. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with
her husband Jay and new baby, Jayson.
267
Notes on Contributors
David A.Goode received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles. An
Associate Professor of Sociology at the College of Staten Island, New York, he has
published numerous phenomenological studies of persons with severe disabilities. He
lectures nationally and internationally about social and research policy relating to
people with disabilities, specializing in studies of quality of life.
Robert W.Mackay received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
His publications include How teachers know: A case of epistemological conflict,
Childrens intellectual rights, and Rebecca Hagey and Robert Mackay, Signs of
Sickness: Sickness of Signs. His current research interests are in film and the state.
Nancy Mandell received her Ph.D. from Northeastern University, Boston,
Massachusetts. She is Associate Professor in Sociology at York University, Toronto and
Coordinator of the Womens Studies Programme. She is the guest editor of Volume 3 of
Sociological Studies of Child Development. In addition to her sociological studies of
children, she has recently published two books with Ann Duffy, Few Choices: Women,
Work and Family and Reconstructing the Canadian Family: Feminist Perspectives.
Iona Opie, folklorist, was the author, with her late husband Peter, of a number of
admired works on the folklore of children, including The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery
Rhymes, The Oxford Book of Childrens Verse, and Childrens Games in Street and
Playground. With Moira Tatem she has written A Dictionary of Superstitions.
Peter Opie was engaged in research and authorship with his wife from 1944 until his
death in 1982. He was president of the Folklore Society from 196364, received the
RSA Silver Medal in 1953, the Coote-Lake Medal in 1960 (jointly with Iona Opie), and,
like his wife, was awarded an Honorary M.A. from Oxford University in 1962.
Harvey Sacks received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1959. His association with
Harold Garfinkel led him to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was
Acting Assistant Professor of Sociology. He also taught at the University of California at
Irvine. His pioneering work in the development of conversational analysis and
ethnomethodology was cut short in 1975 by his death in a tragic accident. His published
works have recently been supplemented by the publication of his lecture notes.
Frances Chaput Waksler received her Ph.D. from Boston University. She is Associate
Professor of Sociology at Wheelock College, Boston, Massachusetts. Her publications
include Jack D.Douglas and Frances C.Waksler, The Sociology of Deviance: An
Introduction and a special issue of Human Studies devoted to the work of Erving
Goffman. Her substantive interests, in addition to the sociology of children, include the
sociology of deviance and the sociology of everyday life.
Norman Waksler is a freelance author whose work has appeared in various literary
magazines and in Best Short Stories of 1980. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
with the editor.

268
absolutism (absolute, absoluteness) (see
also relativism) 56, 17, 18, 66, 68,
146, 235, 240
abuse 248
child 216, 248
access behavior 54, 55
account 30, 33, 49, 194fn
taking 161, 162, 167169, 171, 173,
179, 217, 222, 234
taking, three parts 162
act-object relationship 163
action (social)
alignment of 162, 175
joining 162, 169, 170, 171, 172, 174
joint 41, 43, 53, 56, 171, 173, 175
lines of 171, 172, 174, 175, 176
logic of childrens 193
public 171, 174, 175
relation to talk 250252
action reproduction, as access strategy
54, 5556
activity (see also action)
absorption with 165, 174
adult expectations of childrens 193
adult interpretation of childrens 215
adult redefinition of childrens 119
age-appropriate 68
as combination of item and slot 210
category bound 198, 204206, 207
child-created 255
child-selected 166
child structured 42, 47
childrens lack of control over (see
also childrens control) 222, 223224
doing describing (see description)
flow of 174
in a sequence 210
mutual 175
problematic 171
self-reflective 165, 167, 174
semi-child-structured 42
shared 174
solitary 154, 179, 180
procedures for identifying 179
talk as 209
teacher-directed 42, 166, 181
teacher-selected 182
teacher-structured 47
temporal ordering of 153
activity-category 205
Index
NOTE:

Many entries include information on both children and adults without
distinguishing between them.
Attention is called to the entry sociological study, suggestions for as a guide to
research projects.
269
Index
Adler, P.A. and P. 39, 95, 217, 235, 249
adult beliefs (see beliefs, adult)
adult ethnocentrism (see also
adultcentric) 39
adult-child interaction (see interaction,
child-adult)
adult setting 254
adultcentric (adultcentrism;
adultcentered) 148, 149, 150, 151,
152, 155, 156, 158, 255
adulthood
as achievement 62, 63
as goal of childhood 23
as perspective 67
aesthetics (see also artwork; music,
poetry, story) 17, 179, 224, 235
alignment of action (see action,
alignment of)
affection 7475
alingual 145, 151, 157
altruism of adults 217, 228, 231
ambulance, and half-beliefs 133, 135
animals (see also pets) 24, 25, 30, 75,
151, 152, 254
announcement 183
public 101, 162, 169, 170, 184186,
191
defined 185
ticket as 213
anthropology 28, 64, 121, 124, 181,
199, 201, 207, 235, 240
apparatus, explanatory (see explanatory
apparatus)
Ardener, S. 61
Aries, P. 11fn, 30, 94fn, 145
art 130, 164, 166, 235
art materials 180, 186, 188, 189, 192, 193
appropriate 188
child-selected 181182, 188
teacher-selected 182, 187188
art supplies (see art materials)
artist 194fn
artwork (art work) 51, 179, 180194, 255
aborted approaches to 187
adult views of childrens 179
and distractability (see attention span;
distractability)
and solitary workers (see also
activities; artwork, solitary; play;
solitary) 183
solitary workers, defined 183
as gift 190, 191
as group activity 180, 183, 184187
as series of completed tasks 187, 192
childrens knowledge of 181
completed approaches to 187
essential features of 192193
finishing (see also endings) 53, 180,
189191, 192, 193, 194fn
and teacherss dilemma 191
finishing touches 190
in progress 194fn
interactive 183
maintaining focus 193
nature of doing 187189
recognition by others 190, 192, 193
solitary 183, 184
solitary nature of 182184
starting and stopping 191
talk as part of 184, 186, 187, 192, 193
assessment, clinical 152
assumption(s) (see also belief; bias) 9, 12,
13, 14, 17, 18, 1920, 21, 22, 23, 27,
28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37fn, 39, 40, 41,
44, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 74, 78, 84fn,
95, 98, 104, 109, 110, 111, 145, 146,
149, 161, 182, 193, 196, 199, 208,
211, 235, 236, 237, 24
identifying 240243, 250251
suspension of 240243 (see also
beliefs, suspension of)
attention
bids for 192
demands for 193
shift in 192
attention span 167
autism (autistic) 147, 148
autostimulatory behavior 151, 152
Aveyron (see wild boy of Aveyron)

babyish (see also childish) 214fn
baby talk (see talk, baby)
backstage 68
basic rules (see rules, basic)
Becker, H.S.L. 41, 59fn, 68, 80, 91, 92,
96, 9899, 171, 173, 175, 177fn
beginnings (see story)
being in the world 21, 67
as a child 146, 228, 235
belief(s) (see also assumptions; common
sense)
adult about children 9, 6268
half (see half-belief)
in ones subjects perspectives 247
suspension of 6268, 119, 146, 149,
215, 239, 240243, 246248
Berger, P.L. and B. 12, 14, 16, 17, 145
Berger, P.L. and T.Luckmann 13
Index
270
Bettelheim, B. 148
bias(es) (see also assumptions; common
sense) 148, 154, 241, 245
adults towards children 60, 6267,
119, 156, 215, 235
advantages of 6061
biography 5, 8, 10, 147, 151, 157, 192
biographical stages 89
biological attributes of children (see
children, biological attributes of;
infants, non-social aspects of)
blank slate (see also empty bucket; tabula
rasa) 31, 149, 150
blind (see deaf-blind)
Blum, A. 36fn
boredom 154
boundary maintenance (see also social
boundaries) 80, 86, 87, 93
Boyd, D. 252
Broom, L. and Selznick, P. 28

Cahill, S. 217
Carey, J.T. 91
cat 186, 189
categorization device (see membership
categorization device)
category (see also activities, category
bound; membership categorization
device) 3, 4, 83, 92, 96, 111, 146,
147, 153, 166, 183, 193, 196, 197,
198, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207,
208, 231, 232
child/children as 63, 193, 231
negative 63, 69fn
rules for assigning members to 197, 202
teachers 105107, 110
category-bound activity (see activity,
category-bound)
Cavin, E. 234fn, 235
change (see social change)
chaos 48, 49, 55, 172, 193
Chicken Little, 2426, 32, 33, 34
child (see also childhood; children)
as field worker 174
as non-person 229
as social actor 22, 234, 234, 236, 237
as status 146
gifted 147
role (see role, child)
child-adult interaction (see interaction,
child-adult)
child athletes 147, 228229
child development 23, 63, 80, 8384,
84fn, 119, 151, 158, 161, 168, 194fn
child labor 63, 253
child substitute 71, 7375
childs world (see world, childrens)
childhood
adult ideas about 218, 231
as accomplishment 148
as creation 9, 145
as not child-like 235
control in (see childrens control)
defining 89
denial of 145, 147148
deprivation 147, 216
hard times of 216234, 235, 255
childrens strategies for dealing with
218, 222, 231234, 255
grounds of 222
prototypical case of 219221
sociological significance of 217
idealization of 216
negative view of 218
social construction of 9
structuring of 8
children
adults limited knowledge about 217
as category (see category, children as)
as conservative 130
as guerrillas 147
as sacred group 80, 91, 93
as social beings 216
biological attributes of (see also
organism) 146, 147, 148
damaged (see also worlds of damaged
children) 145, 146, 151
deaf-blind retarded 150157
failure-to-thrive 17
gifted
handicapped (see also disabilities)
145, 147, 148, 151, 152, 155, 159
idealized view of 73
institutionalized 147, 149, 151, 152
language
of childrens darker doings 131
understanding childrens 4849
unsocialized 64
childrens concerns 143, 163, 225
childrens control,
lack of 221, 232
over activities (see activities)
over bodies 222223
over inabilities and inadequacies
222, 226228
over moral world 222, 230231
over own lives 221
over presentation of self 222, 224
271
Index
over physical world 222228
over relations with others 222, 224
226
over world of emotions 222, 228230
methods for achieving 232234
over moral world 233, 234
over physical world 232, 234
over world of emotions 232233, 234
childrens likes and dislikes 225
childrens needs (see needs, childrens)
childrens resources 17, 144, 217, 222,
227, 236, 254
childrens ways 38, 42, 4748, 51, 52,
164165, 179
childish 63, 64, 122, 193
Christina 152157, 159160, 160fn
Cicourel, A.V. 26, 29, 32fn, 33, 36fn, 37fn
claim, falsifiable 144, 235, 240, 248249
cleanliness 11
client choices and preference 152
clinical assessment (see assessment,
clinical)
Coenen, H. 39
co-involvement (see also involvement
stances) 162, 171172, 173, 175, 178
collection (see membership categorization
device)
commands 5758, 101102, 104, 219
common sense (see assumptions; biases,
beliefs)
common-sense assumptions (see
assumptions)
communicative competencies (see
competencies, communicative)
competence (competencies), childrens
27, 28, 30, 31, 33, 36fn, 62, 66, 68,
92, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 163,
173, 179, 181, 193, 195, 213, 215,
219, 235, 236, 253
communicative 29, 36fn
interpretive 27, 2935, 37fn, 92fn
defined 27
relative definitions of 156
concealment 7778
concept(s), sociological 12, 61, 6768,
96, 111, 122, 169, 177fn, 199
Condillac 149
conflict (see also power) 6, 17, 21, 52, 88
adult-child 17
conscience 78
consciousness 78
consistency (relevance) rule (see rule,
consistency)
consistency, principle of 33
controls, 11fn, 19
childrens (see childrens control)
childrens lack of (see childrens
control) 221
conversation of gestures (see gestures,
conversation of)
conversational statement (see statement,
conversational)
conversational sequencing 211213
Corsaro, W. 39, 42, 44, 48, 51, 53, 54,
56, 57, 58, 59fn
courage 142143
crowding, as access strategy 55, 162,
170, 171
cultural differences 157
cultural recipes (see culture)
culture (see also subculture) 28, 31, 35,
37fn, 73, 79, 93, 98, 121, 145, 147,
148, 149, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157
adult 27, 121, 147, 150, 152, 158
childrens 23, 30, 36fn, 121, 124,
132, 145, 147, 148, 157159, 254
denial of participation in 145, 147,
148
inclusion and disinclusion
mechanisms of 159
participation in 147
transmission of 126129
transmission, wear and tear during
12712
fine power of 201202
kids (see culture, childrens)
cute(ness) 88, 106, 226, 227
as childrens strategy for control 233
234
cynicism 246, 248

Damon, W. 39
damaged children (see children,
damaged)
dancing 82, 92, 105, 178
deaf-blind 145, 146, 148, 151, 152, 154
curriculum 154
simulated 152
decisions, by adults for children 222
declaratives 5758
deficits, organic 147, 148, 149, 151, 153
definition(s) of the situation 78, 92, 162,
167, 172, 175, 176fn, 186, 201
degradation 225
Denzin, N.K. 167, 169, 173, 174, 176
deprivation
as discipline 101
Index
272
childhood (see childhood deprivation)
environmental (see environmental
deprivation)
social (see social deprivation)
description(s) 101, 196, 199, 215
as sociological problem 199
identifying possible 206208
medical 151
of observations 243
possible 206, 208
problems in recognizing possible 199
202
recognizing 196, 199, 208
story as possible 213
descriptive studies (see observations)
determinism, social (see social
determinism)
development
cognitive 40
of mind 9
developmental theory (see child
development)
developmentally delayed (see also
retarded) 69fn
developmentally disabled (see also
handicapped) 148, 149, 150, 157
deviant socialization (see socialization,
deviant)
deviant subculture (see subculture,
deviant)
deviance/deviant(s) (see also difference;
label; rule-breaking) 20, 21, 36fn, 80,
90, 91, 96, 98100, 105, 107108,
110, 111, 147,254
as a concept 96, 98, 111
as interaction 99
defined 98
kindergarten (see deviance)
last one as 108
theoretical aspects of 9899
device (see membership categorization
device)
dialectical lore (see lore, dialectical)
difference (see also cultural differences) 63
difference, as deviance 110
directions, following 103104, 105
disabilities (see also developmentally
disabled; handicap) 157, 160fn
remediating 156
discipline (see also punishment) 100
107, 109, 110, 248
avoiding 105, 107110
physical 101102
selective 105107
varieties of 100102
verbal 101102
distractability 183, 184, 192, 193
divorce 229230, 241
dog(s) 7475, 133, 241, 242, 248
Douglas, J.D. 81
Douglas, J.D. and Waksler, F.C. 98
Douglas, N. 130
drawing (see artwork)
drugs (see marijuana)
duplicative organization (see also
membership categorization device)
203204, 207
Durkheim, E. 244

economy rule (see rule, economy)
education 10
special 158
egocentric 166, 192
embarrassment 216, 228, 229, 242
emotion(s) 219, 229
as childrens strategy of control 233
childrens control)
empirical investigation (see also
sociological studies) 241, 252
empty bucket (see also blank slate; tabula
rasa) 14, 15, 16, 20, 31, 121, 146, 149
endings (see story; see also artwork,
finishing)
enfant sauvage, un (see wild boy of
Aveyron)
engrossment 163, 165, 166, 167, 173
176fn, 178
environment
adaptation to 153
adult structured (see also activity) 42
non-humanly ordered 149
physical 5
environmental deprivation 148
epistemology (see also knowledge) 60,
61, 215
Erikson, E. 11fn, 78, 80, 92
ethnocentrism, adult (see adultcentrism)
ethnomethodology 216
euthenasia 159
explanatory apparatus 200, 201, 202, 215

facial expression (see also The Look) 148
facticity (see also social fact) 217, 219
faking illness (see also childrens control)
220, 232
falsifiability (see claims, falsifiable)
fear 3, 6, 220, 228, 243
273
Index
feral (see also wild boy of Aveyron) 147,
148, 150, 156
Fine, G.A. 39, 40
Fine, G.A. and Glassner, B. 39
Fischer, J. and Fischer, A. 214fn
folklore (see also lore) 124, 125, 129
juvenile attitudes to 134135
frequency, statistical (see also possibility)
245, 246
Freud, S. 16
friend 10, 11fn, 75, 82, 86, 224, 225,
236

games (see also rules, following) 66, 104,
121, 124125, 131, 143, 215, 254,
255
luck in (see luck in games)
Gamesmanship 140141
Garfinkel, H. 29, 31, 31fn, 35, 36fn, 65,
181, 242
Garvey, C. 55, 56, 167
Garvey, C. and Berndt, R. 54
gatekeeping 4344, 46
gaze 186
Geer, B. 59fn, 165, 177fn
generalization 246, 251
generational boundaries (see social
boundaries, generational)
genitals 9, 154
gestures, conversation of 56
gleaning 195, 196
gloss 27, 28, 36fn, 176
Goffman, E. 53, 170, 174, 176fn, 177fn,
229
Gold, R. 164
Golding, W. 64
Goode, D.A. 39, 66, 69fn, 235
Goode, D.A. and Gaddy, M.P. 152
Goode, D.A. and Waksler, F.C. 217
Goode, D. with Waksler, F.C. 20
Goode, E. 91
gossip 243
groups, joining (see also action, joining)
101, 163
growing up 147
gullibility 246, 248
Gusfield, J.R. 79

habilitation 156, 157
half-belief (see also belief) 61, 122, 133
144
adult 122
testing of 143144
Hall, E.T. 30
handicap see children, handicapped;
disabilities)
handicapped as label 145
hearers maxims (see maxims, hearers)
hearing (see also maxims) 101, 195,
196, 197, 200, 202, 203, 204, 205,
206, 207, 211, 213, 215
helping professions (see also human
services; social work) 152, 158
helping relationships (see also human
services; social work) 156
hermeneutics 176
Hughes, E.G. 67, 174
Hughes, R. 64
human 5, 6, 11, 15, 17, 28, 145, 149,
150, 159
development (see child development)
diversity 156
life, innovation and novelty of 168
nature 15
potentials 156, 160fn
human services (see also helping
professions; social work) 150, 151,
155, 158, 159
failures of 150
humor (see also joke) 75, 131
as sociological technique 242243
Humphreys, L. 62, 249
Husserl, E. 61, 216, 239, 252
hypocrisy 153

identity 910, 11fn
achieved 10
assigned 910
deviant 79
identification 10
self- 10
ideology 19, 20, 40, 45, 52, 64
ignoring/ignored 102, 107
illness 10
faking 220, 232
imitation 42, 80, 82, 87, 93
infants, non-social aspects of 45
inferences 98, 100, 102, 195, 240, 243
244
Inkeles, A. 28
innocence and children 9
institution 240
total 153
institutional skills 155
intentionality 96, 101
interaction (social) ( 3, 6, 10, 11fn, 27,
30, 35, 41, 42, 43, 48, 49, 52, 53, 54,
56, 58, 59, 66, 71, 99, 118, 152, 156,
Index
274
162, 163, 165, 169, 171, 174, 175,
176, 177fn, 183, 191, 217, 230, 239,
240
adult conception of childrens 45
adult-developmentally disabled
adolescent 150
adults pre-emption of 33
and artwork (see artwork)
availability to 45
child-adult (see also The Look) 23,
27, 28, 29, 3035, 44, 52, 59fn, 68,
74, 113118, 148150, 153, 159,
230, 236
contradictions embedded in 159
paradoxical nature of 35, 158
child-child 161, 162, 176
child-teacher 3435, 164
face-to-face 10, 13, 27, 240
failure of 174
flow of 163
focused 171, 173, 175
pathological forms 147
public 171
rules for entry, procedure, and exit
165, 174
situated 171
sustained 171
symbolic (see also interactionist
tradition) 56, 216
three stages of 5354
trial-and-error 43, 172, 175
unproblematic 53
with animals (see also pets) 254
interactional adjustment 57
interactional age 174, 176, 177fn
interactional awareness 163
interactional competencies (see
competencies)
interactional entry stances (see also
involvement stances) 42
interactional errors 42, 43
interactional mistakes 53
interactional patterns, childrens 43
interactional props 55
interactional rules (see rules,
interactional)
interactional space 55
interactionist tradition (see also
interaction, symbolic) 167
intergenerational bridging 93
intergenerational gap 80
internalization 78, 16
interpretive abilities (see competencies,
interpretive)
interpretive approach 27
interpretive competence (see
competencies, interpretive)
interpretive observation and display (see
observation, interpretive)
interspecial relations 75
intersubjectivity 35, 41
defined 27
interview 35, 164, 182, 184, 251, 255
interview, transcript of 2426, 209,
214fn
invasion
of interactional space 170
of property 170
invitation, as access strategy (see also
involvement stances) 169
involvement (see also involvement
stances, self-involvement) 49, 52, 53,
54, 58, 183
defined 176177fn
interpretive (see also observation,
interpretive) 168
marginal 168, 171, 174
mutual (see also co-involvement) 173
passive 83
reciprocal 162, 170, 173, 174, 178
shared (see co-involvement)
involvement objects (see objects,
involvement)
involvement openers 5758
involvement stance(s) 162, 163, 165176
177fn, 178
four types 163
stance one; self-involvement 165
168, 174
stance two: interpretive observation
and display 168171, 174
stance three: co-involvement 171
172, 174175
stance four: reciprocal involvement
172175
applied to adults 177178, 255
isolates (see also feral, wild boy of
Aveyron) 20, 147, 148
Itard, J-M. G. 148150, 152, 156

James, W. 174
Joffe, C. 40, 170
Johnson, J.M. 59fn
joint action (see action, joint)
joke(s) (see also humor) 125, 129, 131
Joyce, M.C. 119, 227
judgment(s) (see assumption, belief, bias)

275
Index
Kielhofner, G. 156
kindergarten 71, 83, 95, 97110
deviance (see deviance)
how to make it in 107110
Kierkegaard, S. 160
kittens 117, 237238
knowledge (knowing) 14, 22, 23, 29, 31,
37fn, 60, 64, 85fn, 94fn, 95, 100,
101, 107, 109, 110, 113, 122, 149,
150, 153, 159, 160fn, 163, 170, 175,
195, 199, 201, 213, 215, 217, 234,
235, 243, 246, 247, 248, 250
adult 62, 63, 122, 193
adults limited knowledge of children
217
childrens 40, 45, 62, 63, 105, 121,
122, 123, 143, 181, 193, 234, 254
common-sense (see also assumptions)
36fn
sociological 61, 145, 236, 237, 239
252
as guide to practical knowledge
237238
Kohak, E. 239
Kupferberg, T. 146

label(ing) 68, 98, 99, 106, 146, 166, 226
child as 68, 96, 99
childish as 63
deviant as 99, 107, 110, 111, 147
handicapped as 145
medical 153
secondary 99
labor, child (see child labor)
language (see also alingual; talk;
utterance) 3, 67, 8, 13, 26, 28, 36fn,
47, 48, 49, 54, 57, 59, 63, 66, 68,
116, 117, 121, 124, 131, 149, 151,
153, 159, 167, 169, 196, 243
as a situated production 167
of childrens darker doings 131
understanding childrens 4849
learning 13, 43, 81, 91, 107, 149,
158, 159, 169, 177fn, 230
least-adult role (see role, least adult)
Letkemann, P. 249
Lewis, M. 147
Lewis, M. and Rosenblum, R.A. 161
Liebow, E. 38
limits 14, 68, 222
Look, The 113118, 227
defined 115
implications of 118
lore, childrens (see also folklore, rhymes)
121, 122125, 128, 131132, 134,
136, 235
continuity of 124125
dialectal 131132
nursery (see also rhymes, nursery) 128
origin of 121
playground 128
regional variation 131132
school (see also rhymes, school) 127
128
slang 131132
transmission of 121, 126129, 132
types 131
uniformity of 125126, 131, 132
wear and repair during transmission
127129
luck (see also object, lucky) 134, 135,
138, 142, 144
in examinations 138140
in games 140142
lucky charms 141, 144

Mackay, R.W. 12, 22, 38, 41, 64, 92fn,
101, 163, 179, 195, 208, 217, 219,
236
macro-world, 11, 11fn
magic (see also half-belief) 134, 138, 144
magical use of variables (see variables)
mainstreaming 159
malnutrition 147, 216
Malson, L. 148
Mandell, N. 22, 62, 145, 159, 179, 184,
217, 235
Mannoni, O. 148, 149, 150, 159
marijuana 71, 7794, 235, 249, 254
as compensation 88
as everyday occurrence 86
as reward 88
as sedative 85
as symbol of adulthood 83, 84
beneficial effects of 82, 87, 89
for hyperactivity 82, 89
for inducing sleep 82, 83, 89
for relaxation 90
for temper tantrums (see also tantrum,
temper) 82
medicinal use 89
restriction to specific occasions 8789
symbolic significance of 83, 84, 85
Markey, J. 161
materials (see art materials)
teacher-designated (see also art
materials) 50
Index
276
maternity wards, observations of 114,
115
maxim(s)
Sacks (see also rules) 196199, 202
213, 215, 255
hearers (see also hearing) 197, 198,
203, 204, 206, 208
sociological suspension of 215
viewers (see also rule, consistency;
seeing) 198, 207208
Mayer, C.L. 32
McNeil, M.C. 148
Mead, G.H. 40, 41, 42, 49, 53, 56, 57,
78, 80, 92, 162, 163, 168, 174, 175,
176, 176fn, 177fn, 216
Meadian problem (question) 163, 174,
175, 177fn
meaning 6, 7, 11, 29, 31, 41, 48, 49, 53,
54, 57, 59, 80, 92, 93, 105, 150, 153,
155, 170, 171, 176, 201, 214, 215,
242, 243
joint 56
Meads triadic theory of 165
negotiation of (see also negotiation)
163, 174, 255
defined 161
private 163, 165, 166
public 163, 175
shared 175
media 91
membership categorization device 197,
202204, 205, 206
duplicative organization of 198, 203
memories
as literal accounts 219, 234
as source of sociological data 218219
of childhood 218, 231, 255
selective 219
Merleau-Ponty, M. 36fn
methodological accounts 46
methodological problems 47
methodology (see also sociological study)
37fn, 38, 39, 40, 41, 63, 182, 217
219, 239252, 253
Meynell, H. 251
micro-world 1011, l0fn
Miller, K. 138
Milne, A.A. 136
mistakes at work 174
Mitroff, I. 239
modesty 9
monitoring, as access strategy (see also
staring) 5455, 56, 174
monster 217
moral standards 79
moral world (see morality)
morality (moral) 8, 18, 45, 74, 7778,
80, 87, 89, 90, 91, 95, 215, 219, 230,
237, 249250
childrens control)
mores 79
motives (see account; reasons)
multihandicapped (see handicapped)
music (see also aesthetics; artwork) 7,
105 111, 153, 154, 157, 159, 223

neatness 11
needs, childrens 18, 20, 64, 98, 110,
193, 223, 228
negative categories (see categories,
negative)
negotiations, childrens (see also meaning
negotiation of) 170, 171, 172, 175,
176, 177fn
neglect, child 19
Newton, D. 124
noise 48, 4950, 54, 59, 168, 183, 184
non-person, child as 229
norm (see also rule) 15, 19, 50, 80, 149,
198, 206, 207, 208, 213, 215
defined 26
normal person, act like 104105, 110,
111
normative 35fn
normative behavior 26
normative rules (see rules, normative)
normative sociology (see sociology,
normative)

Oakley, A. 247
obedience, passive 156
object 5, 41, 43, 5358, 59fn, 154, 162,
163, 166, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172,
174, 176, 176fn, 228
alternative readings 155
children as 118, 162, 234
child-chosen (see also activity) 162, 166
common 175
cultural recipes for use 155
exploring 165
identification of 168
interaction with 165
involvement (see also involvement
stances) 50, 53, 58, 163, 165, 167, 171
license in relationships with 155
lore associated with 135
lucky 137138
277
Index
making 167, 168
manipulating 165, 166, 168
mutual understanding of 171
new, emergence of 168
relationship with 165
resistance of 176fn
self-object exchange (see self)
shared 56, 58
shared meaning of 175
situational use of 163
teacher-chosen (see also activity) 162,
166
uses of
proper (correct) 154, 155
varied 155
object involvement openers, as access
strategy 54, 57, 58
object involvement rituals (see rituals,
object involvement)
objectivity (see also ethical neutrality) 63
observation (see also methodology;
viewers maxims) 52, 8081, 100,
102, 148150, 152, 167, 179, 180,
182183, 193, 208, 209, 243, 246,
250, 251, 254, 255
description of 243
focused 174
interpretive (see also involvement
stances) 54, 55, 162, 168171, 174,
177fn, 178
mutual 182
non-participant 97, 114
participant 3843, 48, 58, 59, 152,
153, 164
omen(s) (see also half-belief) 135136,
138
ontology (see also reality) 29, 61
Opie, I. and P. 23, 30, 36fn, 61, 145, 235
orderliness 208
organism (see also children, biological
attributes of) 5, 7, 8, 9
organic deficits (see deficits)
organic insults (see deficits)
organization, duplicative (see duplicative
organization)
other(s), discovering 13
overgeneralization (see generalization)
oversocialized conception of man 1416,
64

Papert, S. 160fn
painting (see art)
panic 220
parakeet 7475
paradigm 158
parallel play (see play, parallel)
parody 127
participant observation (see observation,
participant)
passive obedience (see obedience, passive)
pathology (pathological) 147, 148, 152,
155
pedagogy (see also teaching) 148150,
152, 156, 157, 158
permissiveness 81, 85, 86, 87
perspectival problems 4243
perspective(s) 1, 23, 27, 38, 41, 248
adult 12, 22, 23, 40, 43, 65, 66, 71,
78, 92fn, 110, 111, 113, 118, 122,
150, 152, 156, 163, 166, 177fn,
219, 231, 236
diversity in 7778
belief in 247
childrens 22, 23, 44, 59, 65, 66, 78,
84fn, 92fn, 119, 151, 161, 164,
166, 169, 217, 219, 222, 230, 236
interpretive 2930
Martian 242
normative 28, 29
of those being studied 239, 247248,
249
contrasted with sociologists
perspective 249
reciprocity of 33
sociological 61, 110, 193, 239252
sociologists personal 249
teachers 51
pets (see also animals) 17, 71, 7376,
253
and The Look 115, 117
as child substitutes (see child substitute)
phenomenology 37fn, 68, 156, 174, 216,
217, 239, 252, 253
defined 61
physical world, lack of control over (see
also childrens control) 101
Piaget, J. 64, 78, 80, 92, 93, 161
Pines, M. 29
play 9, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 54, 92, 99,
107, 108, 109, 119, 150, 153, 165,
166, 176, 176fn, 177fn, 181, 182,
222, 230
parallel 166, 182
solitary (see also solitary) 166, 182
playing at a self 167
playmate 11, 42, 131, 156
poetry (see also aesthetics) 29, 123
point of view (see perspective)
Index
278
policemans 6, 8
Polanyi, M. and Prosch, H. 177fn
political 36fn, 60, 63, 64, 65, 69fn, 85,
99, 158159, 215, 217, 218, 234
pornography 80, 91, 249
possibility, sociological study of (see also
frequency) 246, 251
pot smoking (see marijuana)
posture 114, 115, 116, 118, 148, 151
power 4, 6, 13, 14, 17, 33, 65, 66, 68,
69,69fn, 71, 98, 111, 133, 140, 146,
158, 217, 230, 237, 247
praxis 68
precocity 83
presentation of self (see self, presentation of)
privacy 41, 163, 170
prodigies, child 18
Psathas, G. 104
psychiatrists 65, 214fn
psychoanalysis 161
psychologists 9, 28, 167, 177
psychology 23, 39, 61, 63, 92, 142, 151,
176fn, 177fn, 179, 182, 194fn, 240
public announcement (see
announcement, public)
punishment (see also discipline) 3, 16,
97, 98, 101102, 111,230
physical 101102
puppy 117
pushing (as communication) 152153

qualitative data (see variable; see also
observation)
quantitative data (see variable)
questionnaire 243, 251

rapport 5152, 59
reality (see also ontology) 7, 10, 62, 65,
147, 156, 216
reasons (see also account) 98, 111, 251
reciprocal relationship 21
(see also reciprocity)
reciprocal involvement (see involvement)
reciprocity (see also perspectives,
reciprocity of) 7, 14, 46, 47
reference, adequate (see rule, economy)
reference satisfactoriness rule (see rule,
economy)
reflection 7, 53, 92, 168
relationship
child-adult (see interaction, child-
adult)
researcher-subject 47
reciprocal 21
relativism (see also absolutism) 56, 17, 156
relevance 199, 207
relevance rule (see rule, consistency)
religion 14
repetition 55, 56, 114, 116, 149, 153,
167, 173, 175, 195, 242
reprimand (see also discipline;
punishment) 105
research
bargain 44, 46
methods (see methodology;
sociological studies)
situation 39
strategies (see also methodology;
sociological studies) 40
resources, childrens (see childrens
resources)
retarded (see also children, damaged) 28,
32, 66, 85, 145, 147151, 153, 159
reward 6
marijuana as (see marijuana)
rhyme(s) (see also lore) 121, 123, 125
132, 135, 254
nursery, (see also lore, nursery)
defined 123124, 132
school, (see also lore, school) defined
123124, 132
sources of 129131
in popular songs 130131
rhyming slang (see slang, rhyming)
rhythm 130
ritual(s) 84, 122, 125, 128, 154
access (see also strategies, access) 53
58
verbal 57
object involvement 57
religious 153
role (social) 11, 28, 67, 167
adult 6768, 146
adult-child participatory 43
age 39
child 40, 6768, 146, 235, 254
least-adult 3853, 56, 58, 59, 145, 253
membership 39
observer (see observation)
participant observer (see also
observation, participant) 42, 44, 46,
49, 53, 59
research 38, 3940, 42, 44, 45, 48
taking role of other 56, 174
teachers (see also teacher) 38, 46, 165
role boundaries 44
role conflict 68
role enactment 53, 59
279
Index
role negotiation 45
role strain 68
role-taking 43, 57, 163, 165, 167, 176
reciprocal 171
role-testing 5051, 165
Roth, J, A. 122, 249
Rubella Syndrome 151
rule(s) (see also maxims) 3, 13, 15, 16,
26, 68, 242
adult 66, 215, 228, 237
childrens modification of 215
for children 96, 209, 215, 222, 254
for childrens feelings 228
for kindergarteners 9798, 100105,
110
basic 26, 27, 32fn
bending 217
chaining, in talk (see also talk) 212
changing 217
childrens 66, 215, 255
for adults 215
classroom 98, 104
consistency or relevance 197, 202
203, 207, 210
corollary 197, 203, 206
viewers maxim as 207
constructing 42, 98
differential application of (see also
discipline, selective) 110
economy (reference satisfactoriness)
197, 202203
enforcement of 100, 111
following 104
for games (see also games) 255
for reading and writing sociology
239252
for talk 208209, 251
for talking distance 242
hospital 152
identifying 100
implicit 49
interactional (see also interaction) 43,
53, 170
interpretive 29, 32fn
negotiation of 170
normative 27, 32fn
defined 26
of conversational sequencing (see
conversational sequencing)
of two-party conversation 212
reference satisfactoriness (see rule,
economy)
relevance (see rule, consistency)
sources of 98
surface 29, 32fn, 37fn
studying 100
taken-for-granted (see also
assumptions; common sense) 71, 98,
100, 102105, 215
teachers (see rules, adults)
rule-breaker (see rule-breaking; deviant)
rule-breaking (see also deviance; rule
violation) 42, 50, 51, 96, 98, 100,
101, 102, 105, 107, 111, 170
as sociological technique 242
last child as 108
rule-following 15, 16, 217
rule identification 96
rule-learning 111
rule-making 111
rule-stretching 42, 50, 51
rule-violation (see also deviance; ruleb
reaking) 16, 50, 66, 98, 99, 100, 102
105, 107, 111, 242

Sacks, H. 36fn, 217, 235, 236
Sacks maxims (see maxims)
sanctions, negative (see also discipline;
punishment) 103
sanctions, positive (see reward)
sarcasm, as discipline 101
sayings, childrens 121
scapegoating 94, 135
Schaffer, R. 175
schizophrenia 251
Schutz, A. 31
scientific method 150
sciences, natural 18
scribbling 186, 188
Scott, M.B. and Lyman, S.M. 94
secrecy (see also concealment) 51, 80, 83,
85, 90, 93
seeing (see also maxims) 196, 197, 198,
207, 215
self 3, 7, 9, 13, 14, 16, 28, 36fn, 41, 92,
101, 162, 167, 168, 236
playing at a 167
presentation of 158, 230
childrens control over (see
childrens control)
underdeveloped 168
self-absorption (see self-involvement)
self-concept 32
self-discovery 7
self-fulfilling prophecy 61
self-identification 10
self-involvement (see also involvement)
Index
280
53, 162, 165168, 170, 171, 174,
177fn, 178
self-object exchange 166, 174
self-other-object involvement 163, 166, 175
self-reflective activity (see activity)
self-reflective involvement (see also
involvement) 157, 167168
self-reflection 170
sentimentality 74
sequential ordering (see story)
seriousness, childrens 63, 168
significant other 8
silence 8, 77, 165, 182, 183
Simon, W. and Gagnon, J.H. 79
singing (see also music, song) 107, 108,
126, 193
situational definitions (see definition of
the situation)
slang, rhyming 129
slang lore (see lore, slang)
sleep 82, 83, 222, 223
small talk (see talk, small)
social act 56, 57
social action (see action, social)
social actor, child as (see child, as social
actor)
social behavior, patterned 4
social boundaries (see also social
borders) 82,83
social boundaries, generational 93
social borders (see also social
boundaries) 80
social change 7779, 9091, 158159,
250
sequential model 80
social construction 163
social control 16
social determinism 15, 39
social deprivation 148
social devaluation 151
social exchanges 41, 43, 174
repairing 43
social fact (see also facticity) 146
social interaction (see interaction)
social isolates (see feral)
social meaning (see meaning)
social objects (see objects, social)
social recognition 152
social rejection 151
social ritual (see ritual, social)
social work (see also helping professions;
human services) 69fn, 146
social world (see world, social)
socialization 1, 48, 1222, 23, 2630,
36fn, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 79, 80, 93,
119, 158, 162, 236, 253
agent(s) of 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 253
as adult conception 23, 28, 64
as concept 1, 3, 12, 15, 16, 20, 21,
28, 64
as political activity (see also political)
65
contradictory 93
criticisms of 3, 4, 1218, 20, 23, 60
defined 3
deviant 7980, 94, 254
incomplete 36fn
initial (primary) 1011, 1314, 16,
17, 21
defined 10
range of the concept 1213
secondary 1011, 1314, 16, 21
defined 10
studies of 4, 176, 177fn
success of 1718, 20
sociolinguistics 158
sociological claim (see claim,
sociological)
sociological concept(s) (see concept(s),
sociological)
sociological knowledge (see knowledge,
sociological)
sociological descriptions (see
descriptions, sociological)
sociological research (see sociological
study; methodology)
sociological study 1, 3, 4, 15, 16, 27, 28,
30, 31, 35, 39, 40, 51, 71, 95, 111,
113, 151, 156, 163, 179181, 196
197, 239252
central (fundamental) questions 15, 20
of children 1, 3, 12, 14, 1922, 28,
38, 40, 41, 59, 6167, 92fn, 96, 97,
145, 158159, 161, 164165, 175
176, 176fn, 177fn, 177, 195, 214,
215, 216218, 234, 253
suggestions for 2022, 28, 59, 63,
6869, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116,
117, 118, 136, 143, 159, 162, 176,
178, 200, 209, 211, 213, 215, 219,
234, 234fn, 235236, 241, 244,
245, 248, 251, 2535
sociological theory (see also perspective)
16, 27, 28, 29, 36fn, 63, 91, 239, 253
sociologist 4, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 20, 22,
27, 28, 29, 62, 63, 66, 67, 96, 110,
111, 113, 119, 143, 157, 196, 201,
208, 217, 239252
281
Index
contrasted with teacher 180, 194fn
sociology 28, 61, 71, 152, 157, 158,
199, 201, 207, 215, 235, 239252
critically assessing 247, 251
defined 239
goals of 240241, 247, 252
interpretive 29
(see also interpretive)
sociology, normative 26, 27, 28, 29, 35
subject matter of 14
Socrates 34
solitary (see also activities; artwork; play)
153, 154, 179, 183
solitary workers, defined 183
songs (see also music, singing) 124, 125,
130
special education 158
Speier, M. 59fn
spells, casting 141
stage(s)
biographical 89
of biological growth 8
of development (see child
development)
of life (see also child development)
2829, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207
stance(s), involvement (see involvement
stances)
staring 180
as access strategy (see also monitoring)
54, 162, 168169, 177fn
statement
as discipline 101, 104
conversational, defined 185
reciprocal 186
sequential 185
unexamined 248249
verbal (see talk; utterance)
status
adult 84
granting to children 237
master 67
semi-adult 84
stereotype 205
adult of children 235
stereotypy 147, 153
stigma 79, 90, 91
story 24, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 100, 108,
173, 196, 199, 208211, 215, 217,
218, 219, 222, 223, 224, 229, 230,
231, 234, 235
as possible description 213
beginning 209211, 213
characteristics of 209
ending 209211, 213, 231
sequential ordering of (see also
description) 208213
Strauss, A.L. 50, 168, 175, 177fn
strategies
access 52, 5354, 55, 57, 58
defined 53
childrens 68
for dealing with hard times (see
childhood, hard times of)
study, sociological (see sociological study)
stupidity 149, 155
social construction of 149
subculture 93, 98
deviant 79
subjectivism/subjectivity 27, 47, 199
superstition (see also half-belief) 122,
129,132, 134, 135, 139, 142
supplications, as access strategy 54, 58
survival arts 149, 150
Swami Rama 252
swimming lesson 219221
symbolic interaction (see interaction,
symbolic)

tabula rasa (see also empty bucket; blank
slate) 31, 146, 149, 152
taken-for-granted (see assumptions)
taking account (see account, taking)
taking the attitude of the other 162
taking the role of the other 162
talk (see also conversational sequencing;
language; statement; utterance) 15,
24, 66, 68, 69fn, 97, 103, 106, 107,
108, 109, 110, 114117, 179, 183,
184, 192, 196, 209, 212, 213, 215,
250, 251, 255
as focus for involvement 173, 196
as part of doing artwork (see also
artwork) 184
baby 74, 114, 116, 117, 227
defined 114, 116
baby animal 57
back 7
begun with ticket 213
childrens restricted rights to 211213
childrens with adults 211213, 253
functions of 251
non-trivial 210
of inferences 243
preparing to 103
relationship to action 252
rules for talking distance 242
rules governing 208209, 251
Index
282
small 178, 186
taken-for-granted features of 196
teachers 105107
tantrum, temper (see also childrens
control) 226, 232
teacher (see also teaching) 23, 2426, 28,
3035, 36fn, 38, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47,
49, 50, 51, 52, 58, 59fn, 82, 95, 97
110, 149, 150, 156, 157, 163, 164,
166, 167, 173, 179, 180, 181, 183,
184, 186, 188191, 193, 194fn, 197,
198, 228, 234, 236, 239
contrasted with sociologist 180, 194fn
denigrating the 131
telling the 102, 108, 188
teaching (see also teacher) 13, 86, 95, 146,
149, 156, 158, 215, 217, 237, 253
team 203
telling the teacer (see teacher, telling)
temper tantrum (see temper)
territoriality 45, 170
threat as discipline 101102
theory, common-sense 242
theory, sociological (see sociological
theory; see also perspective)
ticket (see announcement, ticket as;
talk, begun with ticket)
tiny doping (see marijuana)
too young 84, 106, 109, 111, 226227
translation 30, 36fn, 37fn
transmission of culture (see culture)
training, of children 151, 152
transcript (see interview)
truce term 132
Turnbull, C.M. 64
Turner, R. 176
turn-taking 56, 171
turtle(s) 7475, 254
Twain, M. 133

Umwelt 157
undersocialization 147
unsocialized children (see children,
unsocialized)
utterance(s) (see also talk; language;
statement) 33, 35, 182, 184, 185,
186, 187, 195, 196, 197, 198, 210,
211, 213, 215, 242

value(s) 7, 11
regarding children 9
variable
defined 244
magical use of 240, 244246
qualitative 244246
quantitative 244245, 252
verbal statements (see statement; see also
language; talk; utterance)
Victoire (see wild boy of Aveyron)
videotape 37fn, 53, 152, 153, 154155
viewers maxims (see maxims, viewers)
view (see perspective)
view (s), common-sense (see common sense)
violation, rule (see deviance, ruleb
reaking, rule-violation)
vocalization 151, 153
voice 8, 103, 107, 109, 114, 116, 117,
118
voice, muted 61
von Uexkull, J. 157

waiting 153
Waksler, F.C. 38, 39, 40, 41, 194fn
walking 154
War on Drugs 78
Wax, M. 52
Wax, R. 44, 46
ways, childrens (see childrens ways)
wild boy of Aveyron 145, 148150, 152,
156
wit (see also humor; joke) 121, 125
Wolfenberger, W. 159
world
common-sense 29
moral (see morality; see also childrens
control)
of emotions (see childrens control)
physical (see childrens control)
social 1, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11fn, 15, 16, 17,
30, 110, 111, 161, 162,215,216,
217, 235, 236, 237, 241, 243, 245,
246, 249, 250, 251
adult 22, 36fn, 39, 62, 64, 71, 78,
113, 146, 150, 177, 215, 234, 254
childrens views of 236
childrens 21, 22, 30, 39, 40, 41, 42,
53, 59, 62, 63, 71, 113, 119, 146,
158, 161, 162, 196, 215, 236, 254
adults views of 236
competing 64
constructing 119
of damaged children 145, 146, 152,
157
descriptions of 201
Wrong, D.H. 13, 1416, 20, 64

Zimmerman, D.H. and Pollner, M. 28

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